Robotic & Smart Manufacturing in Automotive Welding Shop

The slides present an overview of smart manufacturing system including IR 4.0 assessment & adoption, modern automation protocol & system architecture, and robot application in automotive welding shop

Application of the Fourth Industrial Revolution for High Volume Production in the Rail Car Industry

Some recent technological advances in line with the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) are rapidly transforming the industrial sector. This work explores the prospect of robotic and additive manufacturing solutions for mass production in the rail industry. It proposes a dual arm, 12-axis welding robot with advance sensors, camera, and algorithm as well as intelligent control system. The computer-aided design (CAD) of the robotic system was done in the Solidworks 2017 environment and simulated using the adaptive neuro-fuzzy interference system (ANFIS) in order to determine the kinematic motion of the robotic arm and the angles of joint. The simulation results showed the smooth motion of the robot and its suitability to carry out the welding operations for mass production of components during rail car manufacturing. In addition, the ability to fabricate several physical models directly from digital data through additive manufacturing (AM) is a key factor to ensuring rapid product development cycle. Given that AM is embedded in a digitally connected environment, flow of information as well as data processing and transmission in real time will be useful for massive turnout during mass production

Continuous maintenance and the future – Foundations and technological challenges

High value and long life products require continuous maintenance throughout their life cycle to achieve required performance with optimum through-life cost. This paper presents foundations and technologies required to offer the maintenance service. Component and system level degradation science, assessment and modelling along with life cycle ‘big data’ analytics are the two most important knowledge and skill base required for the continuous maintenance. Advanced computing and visualisation technologies will improve efficiency of the maintenance and reduce through-life cost of the product. Future of continuous maintenance within the Industry 4.0 context also identifies the role of IoT, standards and cyber security

The NASA SBIR product catalog

The purpose of this catalog is to assist small business firms in making the community aware of products emerging from their efforts in the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. It contains descriptions of some products that have advanced into Phase 3 and others that are identified as prospective products. Both lists of products in this catalog are based on information supplied by NASA SBIR contractors in responding to an invitation to be represented in this document. Generally, all products suggested by the small firms were included in order to meet the goals of information exchange for SBIR results. Of the 444 SBIR contractors NASA queried, 137 provided information on 219 products. The catalog presents the product information in the technology areas listed in the table of contents. Within each area, the products are listed in alphabetical order by product name and are given identifying numbers. Also included is an alphabetical listing of the companies that have products described. This listing cross-references the product list and provides information on the business activity of each firm. In addition, there are three indexes: one a list of firms by states, one that lists the products according to NASA Centers that managed the SBIR projects, and one that lists the products by the relevant Technical Topics utilized in NASA's annual program solicitation under which each SBIR project was selected

Multi-robot spot-welding cells: An integrated approach to cell design and motion planning

The necessity to manage several vehicle models on the same robotized assembly cell has made the cell design and the robot off-line motion planning two fundamental activities. Industrial practice and state-of-the-art methods focus on the technical issues of each activity, but no integrated approach has been yet proposed, resulting in a lack of optimality for the final cell configuration. The paper introduces a formalization of the whole process and proposes a heuristic multi-stage method for the identification of the optimal combination of cell design choices and motion planning. The proposed architecture is depicted through a real case for welding application

Underpinning UK High-Value Manufacturing: Development of a Robotic Re-manufacturing System

Impact and its measure of outcome is a given performance indicator within academia. Impact metrics and the associated understanding play a large part of how academic research is judged and ultimately funded. Natural progression of successful scientific research into industry is now an essential tool for academia. This paper describes what began over ten years ago as a concept to automate a bespoke welding system, highlighting its evolution from the research laboratories of The University of Sheffield to become a platform technology for aerospace remanufacturing developed though industry-academia collaboration. The design process, funding mechanisms, research and development trials and interaction between robotic technology and experienced welding engineers has made possible the construction of a robotic aerospace turbofan jet engine blade re-manufacturing system. This is a joint collaborative research and development project carried out by VBC Instrument Engineering Limited (UK) and The University of Sheffield (UK) who are funded by the UK governments’ innovation agency, Innovate-UK with the Aerospace Technology Institute, the Science and Facilities Technology Council (STFC) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)

Online programming system for robotic fillet welding in Industry 4.0

Purpose Fillet welding is one of the most widespread types of welding in the industry, which is still carried out manually or automated by contact. This paper aims to describe an online programming system for noncontact fillet welding robots with "U"- and "L"-shaped structures, which responds to the needs of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Design/methodology/approach In this paper, the authors propose an online robot programming methodology that eliminates unnecessary steps traditionally performed in robotic welding, so that the operator only performs three steps to complete the welding task. First, choose the piece to weld. Then, enter the welding parameters. Finally, it sends the automatically generated program to the robot. Findings The system finally managed to perform the fillet welding task with the proposed method in a more efficient preparation time than the compared methods. For this, a reduced number of components was used compared to other systems: a structured light 3 D camera, two computers and a concentrator, in addition to the six-axis industrial robotic arm. The operating complexity of the system has been reduced as much as possible. Practical implications To the best of the authors' knowledge, there is no scientific or commercial evidence of an online robot programming system capable of performing a fillet welding process, simplifying the process so that it is completely transparent for the operator and framed in the Industry 4.0 paradigm. Its commercial potential lies mainly in its simple and low-cost implementation in a flexible system capable of adapting to any industrial fillet welding job and to any support that can accommodate it. Originality/value In this study, a robotic robust system is achieved, aligned to Industry 4.0, with a friendly, intuitive and simple interface for an operator who does not need to have knowledge of industrial robotics, allowing him to perform a fillet welding saving time and increasing productivity

Mass Production Processes

It is always hard to set manufacturing systems to produce large quantities of standardized parts. Controlling these mass production lines needs deep knowledge, hard experience, and the required related tools as well. The use of modern methods and techniques to produce a large quantity of products within productive manufacturing processes provides improvements in manufacturing costs and product quality. In order to serve these purposes, this book aims to reflect on the advanced manufacturing systems of different alloys in production with related components and automation technologies. Additionally, it focuses on mass production processes designed according to Industry 4.0 considering different kinds of quality and improvement works in mass production systems for high productive and sustainable manufacturing. This book may be interesting to researchers, industrial employees, or any other partners who work for better quality manufacturing at any stage of the mass production processes