SCARA
Assembly Line
Look Inside a Research and Demo Lab at Epson Robotics
SCARA robots excel at pick-and-place applications, moving parts along a single horizontal plane, but the increased speed and precision come with some challenges. The weight of the robot and the subtle change in payload and TCP position create ever-changing inertial moments, which can introduce offset and oscillation in settling points. Those are common terms in the motion control industry, but not so much in industrial robots.
Epson tackles this challenge with a combination of hardware, with in-house produced quartz crystals that are used as the basis of multi-axis gyroscope sensors, along with the GYROPLUS software to provide a feedback loop (think PID control, for you motion experts) to constantly project a correct motion path while maintaining extremely high speeds.
Robots Automate Assembly of Auto Parts
AMG is Husco’s in-house factory automation arm. It designs and builds most of the manufacturing lines for Husco, and it recently began offering its services to outside clients as well.
While many manufacturers, including Husco, have been devoting more and more of their efforts to EVs, increasing the efficiency of internal combustion engines remains important. One crucial development has been the use of variable-force solenoids in car and truck engines. These small devices optimize the opening of the valves that let fuel and air into the cylinders at the heart of each engine, helping to increase both fuel efficiency and horsepower.To reach its goal, the plant would have to produce a fully assembled and tested solenoid every 6.1 seconds. To make that possible, the AMG team developed a modular automated assembly system consisting of a pallet-transfer conveyor and 10 Epson SCARA robots for most of the material handling. They settled on one Epson G6, two G3, and seven T-Series systems.
Husco and AMG most often use Epson T-Series robots for pick and place operations, but upgrade to the G-Series when they need higher speed and accuracy.