No Manual touch up with DynaCal at Ford - Genk
The following is an excerpt from a summary report from Ford Vehicle Operations
Summary
As a pilot project in preparation
for the B-Car project, the full service suppliers Kuka, Valiant/Steelweld, and ComauPICO committed to design and fully (including
calibration) offline program (OLP) nearly 100 robots for the CD132 vehicle at Genk. Several tests, especially involving the
DynaCal calibration tool, have been conducted by group staff and the Genk plant maintenance department, but CD132 is the first production
program to utilize the OLP technology to achieve a "no manual touch up" level of accuracy. With the help of plant maintenance
staff, and Dynalog, the work was completed for all robots within two days, and accuracy checks (visual against a prototype panel)
looked good. To quantify the accuracy, a test program was created and downloaded to one robot, and the measured accuracy was
less than 1mm, which achieved the desired goal. Better accuracy could be achieved through better design and repeatability of
the End of Arm Tool. Additional maintenance related benefits were identified by the Genk plant staff, resulting in a project
to calibrate all the V184 body shop robots as well.
The Dynalog calibration system delivered the required accuracy for generating production
programs offline without the need for sheet metal or position "touch-up". Further verification of the accuracy is planned for
these cells by measuring the resulting spots on a CMM and comparing that to the CAD data targets. While the fastest measurement
time achieved for these six robots was 45 minutes, the goal of 30 minutes or less still seems regularly achievable based on other
projects.Beyond basic OLP
Having completed the calibration process once, the programs and data are available for the plant maintenance
staff for:
- Offline generated robot program changes (supporting running changes).
- Debugging – identifying changes in TCP, robot mastering, or fixture positioning.
- Re-calibrating in the event of crash or maintenance operation
- Re-filtering existing programs (whether created by hand or through OLP) to a replacement robot (e.g. a swapped robot due to a maintenance issue)
- Transferring programs between robots working on a parallel or mirrored process (the filter compensates for the mechanical differences between the robots, as well as differences in the TCP and fixture alignment).
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