Sheet metal processing industry with the increase of labor costs and product requirements gradually improve, sheet metal processing profits more and more thin, efficiency can not be raised or even loss production. Sheet metal manufacturing enterprises are trying to use robots or automation equipment instead of manual, in order to reduce processing costs and improve production efficiency, some enterprises try successfully, but also pay a considerable cost, most enterprises put into robots, automation equipment, not only did not achieve the desired effect, but became idle equipment, customers visit the inspection opened up to support the face of the order. The vast majority of idle robots or automation equipment are not that the equipment cannot be used or is not easy to use, but that sheet metal enterprises do not deeply analyze their own product technology and output before purchasing robots or automation equipment, nor do they understand the performance and limitations of automation equipment. Salesmen of automation equipment exaggerate the performance of equipment for the sake of performance, and purchase enterprises mistakenly think that the automation equipment they purchase is omnipotent. When the automation equipment is put into production, 30% of the products can be automated production, 70% of the products have to rely on manual production, automation equipment utilization rate is very low.

The perfect automation equipment has its limitations, so before putting into automation equipment, we must carefully analyze the process and batch of enterprise products, and analyze the performance and limitations of automation equipment. The following is to share with you the input and selection of automation equipment for sheet metal process.

blanking process

At present, the cutting equipment is basically laser cutting machine and CNC punching machine, they are CNC equipment, the degree of intelligence is relatively high, the increase of automatic loading and unloading device can achieve fully automated production.

Selection of laser loading and unloading materials

Cantilever suction cup is a semi-automatic feeding device. This device is economical and suitable for thin plate feeding with a thickness of less than 5mm and a weight of less than 200kg. However, if the cantilever semi-automatic feeding method is used for thick plate feeding, it will be very difficult to manually push the suction cup, so it is not recommended to use it. The gantry automatic feeding device is suitable for thick plate and large plate feeding, with good safety and high efficiency.

Automatic laser blanking is not recommended to be put into automatic devices. Laser processing is mainly based on small batches and many varieties. Automatic blanking reduces the processing efficiency. If the production batch is very large, it is recommended to use the laser coil cutting production line for processing, the coil cutting production line saves materials and has high processing efficiency.

CNC punching material selection

The advantages of the unilateral automatic loading and unloading device are: feeding and unloading are on the same side, one cycle of loading and unloading takes 35-40 seconds, the floor area is small, and the material warehouse can be expanded without increasing the floor area; The advantages of the automatic loading and unloading device on both sides are: the loading and unloading efficiency is higher than that of one side, and one cycle of loading and unloading can be completed in 16-20 seconds, but the floor area is relatively large, which is suitable for sheet metal enterprises with unlimited.

More than 3 CNC punching machines are suitable for adding automatic loading and unloading devices. Under normal circumstances, one person can operate 3 CNC punching machines with automatic loading and unloading devices. One shift can reduce 3 to 4 operators, reduce the labor intensity of operators, liberate mechanical repeated loading and unloading work, and have more time to consider the preparation work before processing, such as die preparation, material preparation, optimization of processing procedures, can greatly improve the processing efficiency, CNC punching automatic loading and unloading device is also a very mature program.

forming process

98% of sheet metal forming factories use bending machines. This kind of equipment has a small investment and can be processed in general forming. The only disadvantage is that it requires manual operation. It is difficult for one person to operate when processing workpieces with a length and width of more than 500mm, and it requires more than two workers to cooperate with the processing). When processing plates with a thickness of more than 2mm, the bending efficiency is low and industrial accidents are prone to occur. Bending work is relatively hard and requires a long time to learn and accumulate experience. Bending wages are higher than other types of work. Robot bending and follow-up auxiliary bending are currently two automation schemes to reduce labor costs.

(1) Robot bending.

After debugging the equipment in this way, it can realize continuous and non-stop fully automated production. Long-term processing is more efficient than manual processing. A debugging person can operate multiple bending machines. Its disadvantage is that the debugging time is too long, the operator requirements are relatively high, not suitable for multi-species small batch processing, different products need to replace the suction plate rack. Many enterprises have invested in robot bending. Due to insufficient orders for fixed products, operators are not familiar with debugging, resulting in idle equipment.

⑵ Bending auxiliary bending with motor car. This method can be used for mass production of multiple varieties and sizes. The bending advantages of large workpieces and thick plates are obvious, reducing bending auxiliary personnel, reducing labor intensity, and having strong flexibility. One motor car can be used in conjunction with multiple bending machines, and the investment cost is relatively low. The disadvantage is that manual coordination of loading and unloading operations is required, and automated production cannot be fully realized.

Bend Center

The bending center has high processing efficiency and can realize fully automated production. It is suitable for complex chassis processing. It cannot bend thick plates and products with folded edges higher than 300mm. The input cost is high and the maintenance cost is also high. Factories of general scale cannot afford it. It is difficult to recover the cost after the profit of sheet metal processing is too low.

Fitter process

The main work of sheet metal fitter is drilling, tapping and countersinking. Some sheet metal products need to use aluminum profiles to process avoiding steps, blind holes and fisheye pits. Traditional processing equipment includes bench drill, bench tapping machine and milling machine. Manual operation of assembly line is prone to quality accidents, such as hole leakage, tooth leakage tapping and other phenomena. For more complex parts, there may be many tapping, countersinking and reaming processes of different specifications. Traditional equipment processing is more troublesome, requiring multi-person cooperation and low efficiency. Many sheet metal enterprises adopt drilling, tapping and milling center processing.

Drilling, tapping and milling center is a numerical control equipment integrating the functions of drilling machine, tapping machine and milling machine. Off-line programming, automatic tool change of multi-station tool magazine, clamping multiple parts at one time, automatic processing of all holes, tapping, milling and other processes of parts according to the program, can realize non-stop clamping and disassembly of parts, with relatively high efficiency (40-60 holes can be processed per minute), and can process profile radiator products. The defect is that it is necessary to program and make tooling fixtures, which is not suitable for proofing or processing of trial products.

Welding and grinding process

Manipulator welding is a very mature automation scheme, which will not be introduced here. Polishing is the process bottleneck of all sheet metal enterprises. The polishing work is dirty, tiring and the environment is harsh. The polishing process is an essential process for sheet metal processing. Polishing workers are very difficult to recruit. The polishing work is basically supported by the post-60s and post-70s. Young people are not willing to engage in it. Therefore, the polishing cost is also very high. Some sheet metal enterprises learn from the experience of metal polishing automation and try to polish robots, now the five-axis CNC grinding workstation is more mature and recommend to everyone.

The five-axis numerical control grinding workstation is used for grinding weld scars on the surface of sheet metal workpieces. It is suitable for grinding and polishing the surface of box body, cabinet body, door panel and internal structural parts. It is mainly used in communication equipment, power equipment, medical equipment, environmental protection equipment, electronic equipment rack, safe body and other related industries, replacing traditional manual grinding, improving factory processing efficiency and shortening sheet metal processing time.

The workstation adopts manual material moving, the workpiece is fixed on the worktable, and x/y/z/B/C servo positioning and rotation greatly improve the accuracy and response speed of the equipment. The platform adopts large diameter screw guide rail, which improves the stability of the worktable while ensuring the accuracy. The 5-axis numerical control system, combined with bus servo and intelligent manual teaching technology, solves the problem of professional programming for sheet metal enterprises, it reduces the skill requirements for operators, is simple and fast, and has strong timeliness in transforming products. The defect is that it is not suitable for polishing small batch products, and it is necessary to make tooling fixtures (the grinding tooling fixtures are relatively simple and the cost is not high), and the inside and small corners of some products cannot be polished.

Sheet metal automation equipment selection does not have to choose expensive, imported automation equipment is not necessarily easy to use, but the cheapest must not be easy to use, sheet metal enterprises should choose automation equipment according to their own product characteristics, so as to have value.