Fedemco Organises a day on industrial robotics

The past 25 June, the Spanish Federation of the wooden Container and his Components (Fedemco) organised in collaboration with the Institute of Automatic and Industrial IT (ai2) a day on Robotics, in the Polytechnical University of Valencia. The initiative attracted to a veintena of professionals of companies of the Valencian Community, Murcia and Andalucia, that in his majority already have of robots of technology of reference to scale world-wide like Kuka, Fanuc or Yaskawa-Motoman.

Martín Mellado, professor and researcher of ai2, realised an amena and brilliant exhibition on the basic concepts of the robots industrial manipulators, his applications and the appearances to take into account in his implantation. It stood out the utility of the industrial fixed robots, the structure that form beside tools, systems of control and the programming, as well as the interaction with the surroundings and the user. Likewise, it valued the different components in a robot (actuators, articulations, transmissions, captadores or sensors) considering characteristic like the source of power, the power, the control, the rapidity, the precision, the robustness, the maintenance or the cost.

Next, tackled the different configurations and characteristic of the robots industrial manipulators posing his advantages. Besides, it put in relief the utility of the robots articulated, the selective of cylindrical work, the cartesianos and the ones of type Delta, according to his types of articulations, axles, configuration of arm, of doll, etc.

For Mellado the main characteristics to the hour to select beside the engineering or the manufacturer an industrial robot have to be the following: power, capacity of load, scope, time of the cycle (speed, acceleration) precision, system of control and of programming.

In Spain, the sector of wooden containers presents an incipiente robotización in the end of line of setting, in the phase of fit, manipulation and paletización with a park estimated in some 40 robots.

The main reasons are to improve the performance, the flexibility and the surroundings of work. This installation type is offering returns with an amortización from among two and three years.

With regard to the extension of the robotización to other phases of the process of setting of containers, as for example the manipulation and feeding of components on line, the sector thinks that it is necessary to study to half term his economic feasibility and especially technical.

On the one hand, the human factor still supposes an important resource so much in the control of quality of material as in the supervision of the correct operation of the machinery. By another, the robotización poses challenges in the occupation and distribution in plant of the available space according to the options of design and auxiliary elements of the stations of work. Nevertheless, they present other opportunities in the short term, for example in the robotización of the enfardado mobile, or in the utilisation of vehicles of inner transport without driver.