Sealing of bundled copper tubes by means of cooperating industrial robots
With IBG's customised assembly system, bundled copper pipes with a length of five metres are automatically plugged with protective plugs. The previous customer assembly process consisted of a manual activity outside the production line and was carried out during production breaks. After our process optimisation, the tube bundles are conveyed from the existing plant into the machining area via a conveyor belt and placed on a fixture. In the assembly process, an independent robot cell with two industrial robots is available for each tube side.
The position of the pipe ends is determined for each robot by a 3D camera system and automatically converted into path points. This allows the robot to approach the determined positions and mount the stoppers in the pipe ends by means of a setting head. Partially blocked bundles can be subsequently conveyed onto the device and stuffed to the end. Equipped with a product-specific setting head, this can be adapted to the respective tube plug variant so that a total of five different diameters can be processed automatically. The robot setting heads have a bar magazine for stocking the plug variants.
With this customised assembly solution, we combine intelligent robot control with accompanying PLC and innovative 3D camera technology.
