Using Robot Manipulators on High Efficient Wrapping Machines for the Paper Industry
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Transcript of Using Robot Manipulators on High Efficient Wrapping Machines for the Paper Industry
Using Robot Manipulators on High Efficient Wrapping Machines for the Paper Industry
J. Norberto Pires *
Paulo Monteiro **
Volker Shöelzke ***
* University of Coimbra (Portugal), ** ABB Robotics (Portugal), *** Voith Paper (Germany)
For more information or to download this presentation:http://robotics.dem.uc.pt/norberto/isr01/
http://robotics.dem.uc.pt/norberto/
AbstractIn this paper a remote software environment developed to monitor and
control robotic manufacturing cells is presented and discussed. It was
used with an industrial system developed to wrap, label and assist storing
of paper rolls coming from high efficient paper machines. The system is
briefly introduced stressing out its main advantages. Special attention is
taken to the software architecture used to develop the remote services
available from the system: Services for system monitoring; Services for
system maintenance; Services for file and database handling; Services for
production monitoring; Services for operator interface and system
parameterization from system control panel. The paper discusses also the
advantages of these types of distributed and object-oriented software
approaches, using some inside from the presented implementation. Finally,
we briefly discuss the application of electronic messaging services to this
type of systems, introducing the application EmailWare.
Station
2
To automaticwarehouse
Fro
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aper
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Station
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Station
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1 In this station each roll is measured and weighted automatically and autonomously. The obtained values are introduced into the production
LAYOUT
Station
2
To automaticwarehouse
Fro
m P
aper
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Station
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Station
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Sta
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1 Rolls are wrapped using a wrapping machine assisted by two industrial robots ABB IRB6400 S4 C plus). The robots are commanded to pick 2 headers, one per robot, of appropriate dimensions (there are 6 piles of different headers available) and hold them against the two bases of the roll. Synchronization and messaging (including error handling) with station PLC, which also handles the wrapping machine, is done by Profibus using a simple IO protocol. The system is able to wrap rolls in cycles of less than 20 seconds.
LAYOUT
Station
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To automaticwarehouse
Fro
m P
aper
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Station
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Station
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Sta
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1 External headers are applied on the rolls to finish the roll wrapping process and hold the wrapping paper. Operation is assisted using one industrial robot (ABB IRB6400 S4 C plus). The robot is commanded to pick two headers (gripper holds two headers) and put them on the plates of a heated press that will glue them to the rolls just by pressing them from side to side. Due to the cycle time demands (less than 20 seconds per roll), robots receive dimensions of the actual roll to pick the appropriate header (like in the previous station) but also the position of the press plates (these plates pre-position in function of roll length to speed up the process).
LAYOUT
Station
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To automaticwarehouse
Fro
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Station
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1 In this station two labels are applied to the wrapped rolls (one on top and the other on the right side), with information about the roll (dimensions, weight, customer, production date, etc.). Each label has a code bar that will be used by the automatic warehouse to process the roll. Labels are printed by an office laser printer, and outputted to a small ramp. The robot picks the labels, when commanded to do it, waits for roll in position, puts glue on labels using a glue machine and after receiving “glue labels” command, and puts labels on roll when commanded to do it. After each basic operation, execution status is checked and the next operation is only commanded if success on previous one was obtained. On error states, current process is aborted and the error is issued back to the commanding machine (in this case a PLC). This same procedure is used in any station. All commands are acknowledged when they complete.
LAYOUT
We built another version of this station for other paper machine, at the same company, that uses Ethernet communications and a PC to interface with the production database. The PC is also used to command the station, using Remote Procedure Calls (RPC) made to the robot controller [4,5].
ProductionSoftware
Server
Robot
UNIX Station
PC Server
Sock CMD
RPC CMD
Event
Event
Answer
Answer
Overview diagram
Control Panel
Software Architecture
ActiveXRobot
CommunicationObject
ActiveXForce/TorqueSensor Object
DDE CallbackFunction
DDE Services
DDE ClientApplications
DDE
OLE
OLE
DDE Server
ActiveXRobot
CommunicationObject
ActiveXForce/TorqueSensor Object
OLE
OLE
WindowsDialog
Win32 Application
RPCServer
Messages
BoardNT Kernel
Driver
Fo
rce/
To
rqu
eS
enso
r B
oar
d
RPCServer
Programs RAPIDAplication
Robot Control System
Software Architecture: Implementation
EmailWareA tool for e-Manufacturing.
IF poll_nowPoll_Robots
Check for
emails
Processcommands
MessageQueue
Processmessage
(poll_now = 1)
SMTPservice
POP3service
E-mailServer
Log file
RPCServer
RPCMessage
Message to send
Retrieve commands
Send
Retrieve
EMAILWARE
E-mail alerts
Logs and errors
System Status
Information
Kusiak, A, “Computational Intelligence in Design and Manufacturing”, John Wiley & Sons, 2000.Pires JN, Sá da Costa JMG, “Object Oriented and Distributed Approach for Programming Robotic Manufacturing Cells”, IFAC Journal on Robotics and Computer Integrated Manufacturing, February 2000.Pires, JN, “Object-oriented and distributed programming of robotic and automation equipment”, Industrial Robot, An International Journal, MCB University Press, July 2000.Bloomer J., "Power Programming with RPC", O'Reilly & Associates, Inc., 1992.Halsall F., "Data Communications, Computer Networks and Open Systems", Third Edition, Addison-Wesley, 1992.RAP, Service Protocol Definition, ABB Flexible Automation, 1996.Pires, JN, “EmailWare: A tool for e-manufacturing”, Assembly Automation Journal, MCB University Press, Oxford, May 2001.Box D., "Essential COM", Addison-Wesley, 1998Rogerson D., "Inside COM", Microsoft Press, 1997.Pires JN, “Interfacing Robotic and Automation Equipment with Matlab”, IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine, September 2000.
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