Hyundai HH030 robot used in a robotic sheet metal bending application.

An important company, which carries out work on behalf of third parties in the province of Latina, needed to make use of robotic automation to facilitate sheet metal bending processes on board an electric bending machine. To achieve this goal, the owner of the company carried out a search among the major automation manufacturers in the Italian panorama and, after a careful technical-economic analysis, despite having within the company already two robotic welding islands of a another supplier, has placed trust in Casarini Robotica, represented by Eng. Claudio Ongaretti, a salesman with experience in the field of robotic automation.The customer’s desire was to be able to relieve operators from those repetitive work on the machine that no one wants to carry out anymore due to the repetitiveness and danger of the same. Casarini technician, it was certainly not the reduction of sheet metal bending time, but the possibility of working in full autonomy without any intervention by the staff.

The programming of the robot was therefore taken care of in the smallest details and the program realized in semi-parametric mode. Therefore, the operator only has to enter, on a touch-screen panel, the dimensions of the sheets entering the island, and the robot program is self-configuring to carry out 80% of the work automatically, leaving the operator only the choice of the absolute points of the robot during the bending phases in front of the press. The use of an electric press from “Safan” facilitated integration, since these presses have instant control of the position of the pressing crosspiece. The robotic island, ingenious as it is simple in its layout, includes a loading warehouse, where the operator places a stack of sheets, a centering station for the same, an anthropomorphic robot from Hyundai with a carrying capacity of 30 kg on the wrist, a workstation installation and recovery, necessary for the recovery of the sheets during the work phases, and finally two unloading areas, where the sheets are stacked in alternating layers. Finally, the island provides a manual release slide for the robot in front of the press, desired by the owner of the company, to allow the operator to be able to use the press in manual mode for the production of small quantities. isola has been certified according to EC regulations and it is equipped with all the tools that the law provides to be able to take advantage of the industry 4.0 incentives, i.e. a remote tele-assistance service and the possibility of collecting and exchanging all data of production.