Rising trends of individualized products and more variety of variants coerce a mindset modification in Production Engineering. Industries fulfilling this demand can have competitive advantages. These companies produce products that have competition from extremely automated and rigid production. It is challenging to come up with economical, competitive smaller quantities of highly individualized products.
Production systems that are highly flexible with a high level of automation are just in the rudimentary form. The KIT researches aim to bridge this gap. They are collaborating with GROB-Werke and Siemens to develop a value stream kinematic system, which intertwines the flexibility and versatility of robots and the high productivity and precision of special machines.
This value stream kinematic system maps complete production flows through standard, uniform kinematic systems using vertical articulated-arm robots. It can do usual robotics handling operations, assembly, 3D printing, cutting and joining, and machining. The production system can be frequently, flexibly rearranged without additional equipment.
A grid of zero-point clamping systems enables a simple, rapid modification of the production layout. The grid spreads over the complete production region and rapidly repositions the kinematic systems at the decided clamping points
Compared to traditional industrial robots, optimization measures such as innovative gear technologies and software-based compensation of path deviations are mandatory to execute demanding processes such as machining tasks.
More optimization can be achieved using human-operator approaches as a model. Tasks with heavy loads, high forces, or poor management are managed through the support of other persons. The principle is that several kinematics are successful to solve a challenging task.
Value stream kinematics have software-side support of the hardware. It is time-consuming and complex to set up and constantly rearrange the production system. A holistic engineering platform helps the production engineers to minimize the planning and commissioning time. This platform offers engineers complete support right from product creation in CAD to the final simulation of the production system.
For more details, visit www.kit.edu
