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Any industrial engineering peeps here ? Robotic forge tending

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halik

halik

Lifer
So i'm watching how it's made and they're showing channel lock pliers being made. Glowing-hot sticks of steel are picked up by a worked by hand and he then runs them through 4 steps on a single die forge. The worker has to move it right-across-middle-middle in about 6 seconds and then into another press that removes the flash.

Is this sorta work something that can't be done with a robot? It just seems to repetitive and time-sensitive that a machine would be much better fit for the job...


found the video at around 50sec
 
The drop hammer looks ancient so maybe the issue is the cost of replacing it with one that can be automated.
 
It could probably be done with a machine but it looks like the positioning of metal+ die isn't always exact so the machine would have to account for that. Add in cost to develop a machine like that with the cost of a worker, probably no more than $10 an hour and it is hard to justify machine cost.
 
Anything on a line can be automated....it's a question of whether or not they want to spend the money to do it.

Also, the amount to engineer an automation tool for that....it's probably more than a year worth of work and that is just to get the design out the door. Once you design it, it would take a long time to build it (4 months atleast). Once you build it, you start implimenting it (3 months), once you impliment it, you start teh process, which is the testing phase to get out all the bugs. Ands that if you can get rid of the bugs. When you work on big automation projects like that, you really do not test a model. It would be way too expensive to make a model.

As you can see, it can take atleast 2 years to get the thing running up to speed. That is not cheap.
 
sometimes a canadian accent is annoying. how its made really knows how to pick em i guess.
the first season with the ridiculously lisping gay canadian was the worst.
 
Originally posted by: Gibson486


As you can see, it can take atleast 2 years to get the thing running up to speed. That is not cheap.
Click to expand...

2 years? LOL. Maybe on big lines. I've done two complete cells with robots as the tool (not just a material handler) in just over two months from conception to install. Just depends on the job.

Said job (did two). Each hole or flat has to be positioned and rotated with a thousandths of a degree. <--- (Side air bag tubes for car. Runs along the roof line of the car - one for left and one for right sides).

As for the above video, I would assume it has something to do with the nearly molten steel. Looks like the operator initiates the 4 hit press by some means (maybe a foot pedal?). If that's the case, the robot controller could easily activate the press. I'm not sure why it hasn't been done at that plant...but it really didn't look that difficult to me.

By the way, robots can be had for $30,000 each (or less if you buy a refurbished unit - as low as $10,000).
 
I'm wondering if they are running relatively small numbers of each type of pliers and then swapping dies to do a different type. They may have chosen not to automate because having a person at the machine allows for easier and cheaper swapping between different types of pliers. It could affect the way to pick up and handle the hot pliers, complicating an automated system
 
Originally posted by: Engineer
Originally posted by: Gibson486


As you can see, it can take atleast 2 years to get the thing running up to speed. That is not cheap.
Click to expand...

2 years? LOL. Maybe on big lines. I've done two complete cells with robots as the tool (not just a material handler) in just over two months from conception to install. Just depends on the job.

Said job (did two). Each hole or flat has to be positioned and rotated with a thousandths of a degree. <--- (Side air bag tubes for car. Runs along the roof line of the car - one for left and one for right sides).

As for the above video, I would assume it has something to do with the nearly molten steel. Looks like the operator initiates the 4 hit press by some means (maybe a foot pedal?). If that's the case, the robot controller could easily activate the press. I'm not sure why it hasn't been done at that plant...but it really didn't look that difficult to me.

By the way, robots can be had for $30,000 each (or less if you buy a refurbished unit - as low as $10,000).
Click to expand...

wow...maybe...all I have done is big jobs. When I'm lucky, I get to work on jobs with coke, and those projects take so long because of the bidding process. But yeah, I am thinking in terms of doing the whole process from material to final product, not just a portion. That said, I have done 2 month projects in 1 week, so fast turn around cannot be a problem.
 
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