Heavy Payload Machine Tending Robot

Premier Automation provided a Robotic CNC machine tending solution for a large machine shop specializing in the locomotive industry. This machine shop was expanding their operation with two new Vertical Turret Lathes (VTL’s) and wanted a robot to load, unload, and transfer parts between them. The goal was to improve the safety for operators handling the parts with cranes, especially when flipping the train wheel between machine 1 and machine 2.

Train wheels come to the customer as a raw forging with very rough dimensions. The machining process can remove upwards of 500lbs of material from a single wheel. The robot and tooling had to be sized to accommodate parts up to 1200lbs, and flexible enough to handle both the raw forging and finish machined parts without requiring a tool change.

Design Constraints

• Accurately locate parts of varying diameters and heights on an infeed table for the robot to pick
• Provide adequate clearance between the CNC door opening and the robotic gripper
• Robot tooling must be able to handle a diameter range from 24-48″

Premier designed a custom gripper for one of the largest robots Fanuc offers, an M2000iA/1200. The gripper utilized a Schunk Alpha 35 actuator with custom designed jaws and contact flanges. The tooling has multiple jaw spacing configurations to accommodate the part size range.

An operator can program new parts by entering specific dimensional information for the raw forged part and the finish machined part, and the system controller will calculate the appropriate pick and place positions for each stage of the process based on the size of the part being handled.

Premier successfully took on this challenge to replace both robots and an inverted linear rail with new equipment for the customer. Each objective for the project was successfully met, and now the customer is currently back to running the mill with the robots at full capacity.