This thesis describes the automation of the process of plastic injection. We mounted a robotic arm onto a plastic injection moulding machine. The arm picks up pieces from the machine and places them onto a conveyor belt. We used the Fanuc Roboshot electric injection machine and a 6-axis Fanuc LR Mate 200 robot arm, both further described in chapter 3, to carry out this process. The robot arm is controlled with a R-J3iB controller, which Fanuc developed for this purpose. The thesis mainly describes the communication between the aforementioned devices and the programming of the robotic arm. The communication is carried out with the Euromap 67 interface. We show the signals that flow through the individual pins of the plug and socket using a table of inputs and outputs. When programming, we relied on the libraries made available by SPI Interface Software for controlling Fanuc robots when they are connected to plastic injection machines. We also present the plastic injection process step by step and describe the coordinate systems, in which the robot can move.
The main reason for performing this project was damage, which occurred on the pieces, due to collisions, caused by the pieces falling out of the machine. Using automation, we also enabled the company to continue developing in this area in the future. There are many tasks and functions that the robot can perform. We list some of these in the conclusion of this thesis.
With this project, we achieved the desired results at the company. Production line is in everyday use and is constantly being improved. At the time of writing this thesis, we have completed another similar project at the company and we are looking forward to carrying out more of them in the future.
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