Plasma cutting and MiG welding cobots yield heavy-duty results

Software

We can also run everything over WebRTC. What that does is it lets us do peer-to-peer, over-the-internet communication. So whether you’re running on the same physical box in the same data center, in the same warehouse, or across the planet, there’s a communication channel that works.

All of this is authenticated and encrypted. There’s nothing novel about the kinds of security we’re doing. What’s novel is the way we’re applying it to a space and making it easy to have great se-curity out of the box.

Who is Viam targeting with its solution? I think it’s everyone from: • Someone building production robots • Hobbyists who want to tinker and make robots to play with their cat • Researchers trying to work on new SLAM algorithms • Hardware experts trying to come up with a new design for a novel robotic arm • Educators who want to teach high schoolers how to build robots

I’m not saying we have every use case nailed perfectly today in the public beta. But one of the key things is that we want it to be easy to move from space to space. Everything is designed to be flexible so that your system can move from space to space as it progresses from prototype to production.

The Robot Operating System (ROS) is one of the popular platforms for robotics development. Is ROS a competitor or will your solution work on top of ROS? Because of the way we built the system, we can work with or around anything. If you already have a robot running ROS at a low level but you need a way to do teleoperation or data man-agement, you can write a wrapper for that in our system and then still use the lower-level pro-cess. So they can coexist, if needed.

Our goal is to make it easy to write software to bring the learning curve down as short as it can be. ROS has done amazing things in the robotic space. What’s on your roadmap for higherlevel functions? Cloud configuration and logging management are there today. So you can see all of your robots deployed, where they are and what they’re doing. You can also have a full-tail operation out of the box. If you want to build a robot that your end user can drive around from an iPhone app, you can do that today.

Today, we also make it easy to work with data. Robots use a variety of sensors that take data from the real world and do something with it. We’re able to collect all that data. The data is first stored locally on the robot and then, based on the configuration, is uploaded to the cloud at a cer-tain speed and at a certain frequency where there are APIs to do whatever you want with it. Over time, we’re working on making it easy to deploy new versions of code. How do you do that in a safe way where you can’t go and break robots in the field? Let’s get new software tested on five robots, then deploy it to 1%, 10% and 50% of the robots. How do you handle things like roll-backs and mistakes? How do you deploy code versus new machine learning models? Those are things that are coming very soon.

What can we expect from Viam in the near future? We are investing heavily in the platform. We’re hiring more engineers in all sorts of different are-as, whether it’s in SLAM, computer vision or deploying robots. We’re investing heavily for the long term.

This is a public beta, and we would love people to try it and give us feedback. I’m sure we made some mistakes, but we want to understand the kinds of challenges people are having, what works, what is working well with the platform today, the issues they have with it, and the features that they need to go even faster. RR

Cobots

Plasma cutting and MIG welding cobots yield heavy-duty results

Cobots from Universal Robots help heavy-equipment manufacturer reduce time and eliminate manual cleanup on curved plasma cuts by 75%.

The Robot Report Staff

Carriere Industrial Supply (CIS) in Sudbury, Canada, produces heavy equipment for harsh mining environments; much of it—such as hauling equipment, scoops and earth movers—is used to move material om underground to the surface. Like most manufacturers, the company is adapting to a changing workforce—hiring new workers and retaining skilled talent, while strengthening its safety culture so that every employee goes home safely every day. Automation is an ideal approach for repeatable applications. But in a low-volume, highmix manufacturing environment, and with many large workpieces that are di cult to move, traditional robots may not be considered. The CIS team discovered Universal Robots (UR) at a trade show and was struck by the sight of collaborative robots (cobots) performing tasks while people interacted with them. Cobots om UR allow CIS to bring the robot to the work—rather than the other way around—and their easy programming empowers workers to continuously innovate to improve quality and output.

Solution The fi rst project CIS identifi ed for the UR application was plasma cutting of large metal parts. Manual cuts require extensive cleanup due to the accumulation of dross at the bottom of the piece along with the jagged edges that occur when workers need to reposition themselves for long cuts. Reducing the cleanup time was an ideal area for improvement. Pierre Levesque,

manager of innovation and technologies, says, “Using a robotic arm, we knew that we would get a more precise cut and the possibility of eliminating all of the grinding and cleanup of the joints.”

CIS chose the UR10e, which met both its reach and payload requirements, even with the weight of the plasma cutting tool and long workpieces. The UR10e offers a reach of up to 51.2 inches and payload capacity of 27.55 lbs. And despite the size and power of the robot arm, Levesque describes it as a “very approachable robotic cell” in terms of ease of use, even for operators with no robotics experience. They can place the workpiece on the table, “teach” the robot where the part is, and run the program for a clean, precise plasma cut, even on curved parts with complex geometries.

After some innovative programming, the cell became even more approachable for operators, who were excited to make continual adjustments to improve quality and output. Mason Fraser, junior software engineer at CIS, initially programmed the cutting of the most complex parts from start to finish, then built a new URCap program (software handshake between the cobot arm and its peripherals accessible on the cobot’s teach pendant) that “puts the operator in the driver’s seat” with an easy-to-use interface. Now the operators are fully engaged in instructing the robot on the points and speed to do the cut.

“What the URCAP does is augment that operator’s ability by automatically navigating any plate geometry imperfections, and adjusting corner speed when necessary, based on the geometry and the points they provided,” Levesque added. “What you end up with at the end is the operator feeling in control, but elevating the game to make sure that the right parameters, the speeds, the material you are cutting— all that’s covered through the URCAP. So now you have a very successful cut, reduced time, reduced risk for the operator, and it is a win-win for both the operation and the operator.”

While operators appreciate that the work is more rewarding and less physically demanding, CIS also saw significant time and cost savings. Marc Sauve, process leader for steel processing at CIS, operates the plasma-cutting robot with no prior robotics experience. | Universal Robots

A UR10e plasma cutting robot. | Universal Robots

A UR10e MIG welding cobot is mounted onto a 7th axis and placed on a mobile skid to

bring the robot to large workpieces. A human welder and robotic welder work sideby-side, leap-frogging across the side of the truck body to double output. | Universal Robots

Cobots

Previously, 80% of the plasma-cutting time was spent cleaning up the manual cut. On a single large truck body contract over the next three years, Levesque determined that the trimming process on that project alone would be more than 50 hours for every truck. Moving to a robotic application reduced that time to 12 hours per truck, ultimately delivering 1,000 hours and a significant cost savings on this project, exceeding CIS’ expectations

“The interesting thing is to see the operators taking it even further, and applying thought on their cut process,” Levesque said. “With the ease of being able to manipulate the robot and using the free drive to position the torch in different angles, the operators were taking more care on applying bevels onto the final parts, which was quite impressive.”

Marc Sauve, process leader for steel processing at CIS who runs the plasma cutting robot, addressed concerns some may have about robots and jobs. “If I had a colleague who was fearful of a UR robot coming to take their job, I would put them at ease,” he said. “Every one of those robots needs an operator, so it’s just an asset to them; it’s not a tool to remove them.” Results After the success of the plasma-cutting robot, CIS knew it could leverage that programming to MIG welding projects, even though that is a more difficult application. Fraser said, “The MIGwelding UR10e is doing similar profiles to what the plasma-cutting robot is doing, in the sense that it is following curvatures and following profiles; It’s just welding them instead of cutting them.”

Levesque knew MIG welding would pay dividends based on the large volume of welding work the company does. The challenge was to find repeatable parts in its low-volume, high-mix environment. One application stood out: the production of truck bodies with seven large side-by-side filet-welded ribs, spaced three to four feet apart.

“We envisioned that the welder can be working on one of the ribs while the cobot can be doing the next rib in coordination, and then you just index them over,” Levesque said.

Fraser added, “There’s a ton of welding on those, so we are trying to make this save time for the welders. They can work alongside the robot and split the work in half.”

Because of the length of the welds, the manual work raises critical ergonomic challenges to consider for welders. Fraser said, “The robot doesn’t care about ergonomics, so the operator can set up the robot and go work on other stuff that’s more productive and easier to do. Some of the more productive work they could do is cleaning up the welds, making them look nice. The more we can free them up to do that kind of work, the better.”

The MIG welding process is applied to massive parts weighing over 15 tons on the bodies of heavy-duty mining trucks; workpieces that can’t be fixtured inside a traditional robot cell. That required CIS to bring the robot to the workpiece, rather than the other way around. Unable to find a standard solution, the CIS team developed a custom welding skid that can be moved with a forklift to wherever the welding robot is needed. The robot is mounted on a lift to create a seventh axis to reach the entire weld on the side of a truck body. The relatively light weight of the UR cobot arm allowed CIS to develop this innovative approach. RR

Case Study Breakdown

Company Carriere Industrial Supply Location Sudbury, Canada Industry electronic & technology Employees 130 Challenge low-volume, high-mix manufacturing of large, complex workpieces Robot UR10e Tasks MIG welding, plasma cutting Value Drivers doubling output, increasing quality and safety, lowering costs Results plasma-cutting cobot saves 1,000 hours and over $90,000 on a single project