The concept of the fully automated toolroom has moved from wish list to workable reality now that virtually every aspect of tool management, cleaning, assembly, presetting and delivery can happen with little operator intervention. Through unattended lights-out toolroom operations, shops can add shifts, productivity and profits without increasing their existing workforce, all with a simple process such as the five-step system shown below:
- Tool storage systems are the first key to the fully automated toolroom. Tool-handling automation must be able to identify and address all the locations within a vertical storage system, making it easy to find any tool that a job requires.
- As an engineer begins a job, the tool management system locates the items associated with the processes involved, places those tools in a carousel and moves them to a tray, which then proceeds by mobile robotic cart to cleaning and assembly stations.
- Robotic automation inserts a clean tool into a collet, assembles and presets it and loads that assembly into a toolholder that then loads into a mobile cart of finished tools.
- The cart travels on to a specific work area, following GPS signals or optically discernable lines on the floor. Once the cart reaches the correct workstation, machine-cell robotics move relevant tools into tool storage carousels.
- After part machining, automation removes the tools from the cell and loads them back into another cart for a trip to a disassembly station. The same system also can automate regrinding processes.
Obviously, a constant flow of data lies at the heart of the automated toolroom, as sensors count the tools in a given location and RFID tags store data about each tool. This form of data storage, however, requires that the tool doesn’t change between setting and use – a difficult task with solutions such as shrink-fit toolholding systems, where a tool may shrink by several microns before it can be loaded in the machine.
To avoid these problems entirely, shops can choose a mechanically based clamping system such as REGO-FIX powRgrip, which yields ready-to-use cutter/toolholder assemblies. Paired with the automated PGU 9500 clamping unit, which clamps and unclamps tools in less than 10 seconds with the press of a single button, automated presetting systems can be made even more efficient and precise.
The complexities of these systems mean that for the foreseeable future, extensive toolroom automation will remain the type of project that big companies undertake, given their needs to produce large volumes of parts with shrinking workforces and their ability to invest in the necessary capital equipment. The full benefits may not reach small to mid-sized shops immediately, but the technology will get there sooner than many would have expected even a few years ago.