Design and development of an off-line programming system for welding robot cell | |
| Author | Munasinghe, Lidamulage Ushan Rukshan Pramod |
| Subject(s) | Welding Robots -- Programming |
| Note | A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Engineering in Mechatronics, School of Engineering and Technology, School of Engineering and Technology |
| Publisher | Asian Institute of Technology |
| Abstract | Traditional production processes can be complemented by Digital manufacturing processes. This enables you to produce prototypes, tools and final parts directly from CAD data. Digital manufacturing fosters dramatic reductions in delivery times and production costs while improving the overall product quality. The process parameters can be optimized by relevant software tools, which directly influence the product quality and the system working cycle. At the same time they enable users to complete most of the process preparation actions with offline programming in advance, without access to the work cell. This makes the robotic system competitive for both large and small series, or even for unique products. Tecnomatix Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) software, which is developed by Siemens, can be recognized as an integrated and information driven approach to all aspects of a product from its design inception through to its manufacturing, deployment, maintenance, culminating in its removal from service and final disposal. At present it has allowed the companies to virtually build and simulate their production processes through the development of PLM software. This makes it possible to have the physical attributes of the production right from the start. Robots and their program can be simulated and verified in a virtual environment. We did a case study to understand how the industrial robots cells are constructed and programmed. AAPICO Hitech Public Company Limited ,a company located in Thailand that manufactures sub automotive parts was selected for this study. Our research is based on one of the arc welding robot cells in AAPICO. Conventionally, Engineers at AAPICO use cad simulations to first verify the process sequence of the cell and then construct the actual cell at the shop floor. The robot program is done via conventional teaching methods that follows the virtual layout simulation. Cell control PLC program is developed by Engineers from outside. The conventional teaching method programming is a time consuming process. Outside engineers spend a long time to develop the cell control PLC program, debugging and commissioning at shop floor which leads to increase in production time and cost. This thesis aims to demonstrate how digital manufacturing could be used for cell designing and programming more efficiently than conventional methods. We develop offline programming for both robot operation and cell control operations by developing a virtual cad layout. We did this without access to the work floor production process in existing arc welding cell in AAPICO shop floor. We verified the generated robot program by downloading it to the virtual robot controller and afterwards, the developed cell program will be verified by integrating it to the virtual environment via an OPC server. Further using above offline programming concept we discuss the procedure of developing offline programming for both robot weld operation and welding cell sequence prior to the actual cell construction using the virtual system layout. Using this knowledge AAPICO should be able to create both robot and cell program, optimize it and predict the cycle time using virtual cell layout prior to actual system construction thereby, reducing the time spent on cell planning and testing by half. |
| Year | 2015 |
| Type | Thesis |
| School | School of Engineering and Technology (SET) |
| Department | Department of Industrial Systems Engineering (DISE) |
| Academic Program/FoS | Microelectronics (ME) |
| Chairperson(s) | Bohez, Erik L. J.; |
| Examination Committee(s) | Than Lin;Liu Liang Bo; |
| Scholarship Donor(s) | AIT Fellowship; |