By a company in prefabricated concrete reinforcement bars, TRE has been assigned for the automation of a part of the production process.The project exists of 2 robot in one robotcel. TRE is responsible for engineering, software and commissioning.
The installation involves 2 refurbished ABB IRB6640 robot with IRC5 controller. Robot 1 communicates with the bending machine through hardwired contacts. Also, this robot is downloading the bending files to the PC of the machine. This is done using an FTP connection. This way, the robot is leading in which bracket is being bend. Robot 1 and robot 2 are communication via devicenet master/slave device, in which case robot 1 is master.
The brackets are being bend by the bending machine. When the bracket is finished, robot 1 gets a signal from the machine. This robot picks the bracket from the machine and puts it in a template. The pick and place positions are build parametricly. The size of the brackets – and thus the positions – is being read by the robot from the current bending file.
When the right combination of brackets is completely inserted in the template, robot 2 gets a signal to start welding the brackets.. After welding, robot 2 picks the bracket assembly from the template and places it in a rack. When the rack is full, the operator gets a signal to change racks.
In this application, 2 templates are used to avoid waiting times between the robots.
