Application of FANUC arc welding robot in forklift

The application of FANUC arc welding robot in forklift production

this paper introduces the overall formulation scheme of equipment introduction, equipment configuration, implementation content and application effect, and puts forward the problems worthy of attention through the practical application of FANUC arc welding robot in welding the rear axle, oil tank and gantry slider in the production process of a forklift truck

welding robot is most suitable for multi variety, strong labor and high quality production mode. In the forklift manufacturing industry, the prevalence of robot welding is still at a low level, but it also began to slowly develop towards robot automated production. For example, robots can be used to complete the welding of the main components of the forklift, such as the rear axle, left and right fuel tanks, gantry sliders, gantry and so on. The welding is mainly lap joint and fillet joint, and the welding quality requirements are quite high. Its quality directly affects the safety performance of forklifts. After robot welding is applied, the appearance and internal quality of weldments are greatly improved, the stability of quality is guaranteed, the skill requirements and labor intensity of operators are reduced, and the working environment is improved

from the beginning of formulating the overall plan, we have comprehensively considered that the robot welding system must be flexible, humanized, efficient and high-quality

robot flexible welding system is mainly composed of two parts in structure: mechanical system and control system. The mechanical system includes robot workshop, robot body, robot external axis rotary table and robot peripheral equipment; The control system can be divided into robot control system, man-machine interface and other auxiliary units

1. Robot workshop

the layout and main components of the robot workshop are shown in Figure 1. The shape of the workshop is rectangular. The room is made of aluminum alloy profiles and arc resistant pet plates, in which the upper, middle and lower layers of the shading plate are of different colors, which plays an aesthetic and arc resistant role. The working room is a fully enclosed room, and a special dust collector for arc welding is installed outside the working room. The door curtain of the workshop is an electric fast door curtain, which can be opened or closed quickly. The protective light door curtain closes automatically during welding and opens automatically after welding

there is a touch screen operation box outside the welding room, which can set and operate the system. In addition, there is a two handed starting box, which is used to operate the welding fixture box and start the robot to carry out welding work. The appearance of the robot workshop is shown in Figure 2

figure 2

2. robot body

the FANUC arc mate 100iB and arc mate 100ic/6l series welding robots we use are standard six axis robots with six degrees of freedom. Theoretically, they can reach any point within the range of motion. Their arm span ranges are 1373mm and 1632mm respectively. Equipped with Bincai welding gun, they are enough to meet the needs of this system. In addition, the welding of forklift oil tank and other workpieces has certain requirements for the repeated positioning accuracy of the robot track, which should generally be less than 0.5mm, while the robot can reach 0.08mm, which can meet the production needs. In addition, there are almost strict requirements for the automation degree of the equipment and the production rhythm of parts. The straight-line speed of FANUC robot of 2000mm/s can greatly reduce the time wasted by the hollow stroke of the robot track. The outline of the robot body is shown in Figure 3

arc mate 100ib

arc mate 100ic/6l

among them, FANUC's latest hollow arm robot arc mate 1, the technicians of foreign diaphragm enterprises understand the downstream demand of 00ic/6l. Its performance has been greatly improved compared with the old models of robots, and it is more suitable for high-intensity welding operations. It is perfectly combined with Lin injection machine: 70t clamping force Ken power pwi400, which greatly shortens the installation and debugging time and facilitates maintenance

the communication between FANUC arc welding robot and Lincoln welding power pwi400 adopts arclink XT communication, which is full digital communication. Compared with other welders, under the same welding speed, the welding time of a weld can be saved by about 0.4 seconds, precisely because it adopts arclink communication protocol

3. robot external axis rotary table

the external axis rotary table adopts FANUC standard 2-axis positioner, and its load capacity is 500kg, which is enough to meet the welding requirements of forklift rear axle and oil tank. The rotation and turnover of the positioner is completely controlled by the robot, which can coordinate the welding with the robot during welding to ensure the welding quality

4. Welding fixture

in the forklift welding system, the most important part is the welding fixture. Because considering the diversity of forklift models, its parts must also be diverse. In order to consider the manufacturer's cost and production efficiency, the fixture designed by our company can be applied to a variety of different types of workpieces. In this way, the investment of manufacturers in welding fixtures is reduced; Second, reduce the time of replacing fixtures and improve production efficiency

among them, a pair of clamps for oil tank welding can be applied to the left and right oil tanks of different types of oil tanks, a total of 6 workpieces, when the size of nanoparticles is small enough to be equivalent to or smaller than the characteristic size of light wave wavelength, de Broglie wavelength, superconducting coherence length or transmission depth. A pair of clamps for rear axle welding can be applied to three different models of rear axle. A set of gantry slider welding fixture can be applied to 22 kinds of workpieces

the error proofing of fixture is guaranteed by hardware and software. The hardware has different fixture heads to correspond to different workpieces. In terms of software, the robot can distinguish the workpiece through the contact sensing function, and confirm whether the starting program is the corresponding welding workpiece. The principle is to use the difference of workpiece size and the distance traveled by the robot when making contact sensing to distinguish the workpiece. Such double insurance can ensure the accuracy of program operation without fail

5. Electrical control part

the control of the whole workstation is completed by the robot control box, which uses FANUC's unique PMC function to realize logic operation and plays the role of PLC without using hardware. 2. The experimental machine should maintain the PLC of cleaning parts, which greatly reduces the system cost. In addition, the FANUC r-30ia control cabinet can be directly connected and used with the touch screen HMI, which can directly access the data in the robot control cabinet, such as registers, position registers, i/o, and even the error information of the robot can be displayed on the touch screen in real time. In this way, the operator can read information on the touch screen without using the teaching pendant

in a word, robot welding is a development trend to replace manual welding, and its welding quality is more stable, reliable and efficient than manual welding. Shanghai FANUC will wholeheartedly provide you with various automatic welding solutions and equipment. (end)