Filling of cylinders with extinguishing agent with valve installation

Year of realisation

2022

Number of pieces delivered

Industry

Metal fabrication, Consumer industry

Implementation time

35 - 45 CW

Cycle time

10s/pc

Estimate budget

Cat. 250k - 300k EUR

Automated operations

Handling, Measuring, Filling, Assembly, Optical inspection, Marking, Weighing, Palletizing

Technical standard

Fanuc, Keyence, Siemens, Festo, Schunk, Flexibowl

Motivation for automation

The customer specializes in the production of cylinders for fire extinguishers. Due to the nature of the final product - a part of the fire extinguisher, maximum attention is paid to 100% functionality of the device. Due to the enormous production volume, the requirement for zero tolerance of product error and the shortage of workers on the market, full automation of the process was resorted to. Due to the modernization of safety standards, the customer assessed the real risk of changing the production process. Given this need to react to possible changes in the future, the customer chose automation in the form of the HXG platform, which would allow them to react to changes better than a single-purpose machine.

Project description.

The subject of the implementation was the development and delivery of equipment for filling and description of cylinders with extinguishing agent and subsequent installation of the valve. The device is designed as an HXG connected to an HXG for automatic venitl mounting.

The inlet to the HXG is handled by a robot with a dedicated gripper that removes parts from the transport boxes and places them in the inlet and places the finished parts back into the transport boxes at the outlet.

In view of the customer's need for rapid response to change and a broad product portfolio, the facility was designed on the HXG platform - a reconfigurable robotic platform in configuration:

HXG Core - Centre with turntable
Module 1 - Robot bottle inlet
Module 2 - Bottle weighing
Module 3 - Bottle filling with extinguishing agent
Module 4 - Valve assembly
Module 5 - Weighing and printing the bottle
Module 6 - Output of finished bottles for the robot

Process description:

The 6 axis robot removes bottles from the shipping box and places 4 bottles at a time on the input of the manipulator
The bottle is weighed and filled with foaming agent
A valve with a defined torque is mounted on the bottle
The bottle including the valve is weighed and printed
At the outlet, the bottle is removed by a robot and moved
In module 6, the final product is removed by the robot and placed in a transport box
The device collects data and communicates with the parent ERP system and the downstream line