Material Handling
AUTOMATE MORE TASKS
Moving parts from point A to point B is physically demanding, but often necessary work on a production line.
For a robot, the same task is often impossible because the parts can shift and vary in position.
Liberty Reach guidance gives robots the hand-eye coordination necessary to expand the possibilities of automating material handling tasks.
PICKING PARTS
Picking Parts (With Unknown Position / Orientation)
Every day parts are transported through factories in racks, stacks, pallets, conveyors, and AGV’s. When they reach their final destination, the challenge becomes picking a part with a position that may vary by ±50 mm and ±5° and moving it to a fixture with a tolerance of ±1 mm and ±0.5°. Simple for a human, hard for a robot.
Adding V-Guide™ to a robot enables automation where it was not possible. With a single 3D image, V-Guide™ finds a part’s position and orientation, ensuring a precise pick and transfer to a fixture with the shortest possible cycle time.
Reduce human labor, eliminate centering fixtures, use less floor space, and simplify part racks with V-Guide™.
Where used: press shop, body weld, plastics, paint, castings, general assembly, etc.
De-Racking
De-racking parts is challenging to automate. The shape and position of racks are inconsistent, and parts can be loaded incorrectly or shift during transport.
Rather than requiring racks and part positions to be identical every time, guiding a robot with V-Guide™ allows for variations.
Over time, parts are bound to shift and racks get banged up from hundreds or thousands of use cycles. V-Guide™ ensures a robot can handle carrier variation as things change.
V-Guide™ quickly calculates the position of parts individually, so the robot makes a precise pick from a rack every time.
Pick from Conveyor
Transferring bumpers from a conveyor to paint racks is nearly impossible to automate for an un-guided robot. Even when the robot makes a pick, it isn’t precise or repeatable enough to place into the rack correctly.
Adding V-Guide™ to the robot allows for accurate repeated pick & place.
A 2-sensor V-Guide™ system calculates the bumper offset. With a known offset, the robot adjusts to make a precise pick every time.
Pick from Stack
Keeping parts neat in a stack is the goal for all manufacturers, but perfection is not always guaranteed. When the robot makes a proper pick, the stack is not always aligned properly. Without 3D vision, the robot will still pick from these uneven stacks, potentially causing problems further down the line.
V-Guide™ ensures the robot will adjust to the individual part’s location.
Pick from AGV
Automated Guided Vehicles are efficient and beneficial for production yield. Parts can shift in the rack, which can lead to inaccurate pick and place.
V-Guide™ provides enhanced vision guidance to optimize picking from an AGV.
A 2-sensor V-Guide™ system calculates the part offset. With a known offset, the robot adjusts to make a precise pick every time.
PLACING PARTS (ONTO UNKNOWN POSITION)
Racking
Manual labor is still the most widely used method for racking parts. A human can see and adjust to each rack – a robot can’t. Or at least, it couldn’t.
V-Guide™ guides a robot to find the precise position & orientation on the rack to place the part. Even as racks are damaged over time, V-Guide™ provides efficient automated racking.
Stacking
Stacks easily shift. When they do, a robot will struggle to add more panels. Robot guidance helps the robot adjust as the stack does.
Where used: press shop, body weld, plastics, castings, general assembly, etc.
