Flexible, Smart Job Shop Fosters Dynamic Workflows

Excitement is building throughout the sheet metal fabricating world as what were once considered stand-alone highly productive machines—think lasers, CNC punch presses, panel benders and press brakes—now can become chess pieces in fully integrated, flexible and automated production lines. We witnessed that excitement first-hand visiting the EuroBlech trade show in Hanover, Germany, in October.  Case in point: the Salvagnini booth and its massive display dubbed the Flexible Smart Job Shop. 

The display integrated three different stand-alone systems that also would be able, in a production environment, to work together, when required, to manage multifaceted production jobs. Enabling such connectivity: software, material-transfer mechanisms and automated mobile robots (AMRs).

The stars of the smart job shop:

• The new L3.G4 laser cutting machine with material-storage tower, MCU automated sorting device for efficient part sorting and stacking, and vision system;  
• A model P2-2120.G4 panel bender integrated with a six-axis robot, displayed for the first time at EuroBlech and including the RVS (robot vision system) artificial-intelligence (AI)-based vision system. The setup recognizes incoming parts, regardless of their position on the conveyor, and loads them into the next process without operator intervention or centering; 
• A model B3 press brake equipped with ATA (automatic tool adjustment) devices for upper and lower bending-tool setup and including new parametric programming.

In the configuration on display, material feeds into the laser via a 10-tray LTWS load-unload system.  The system on display featured the L3.G4 laser fed by a 10-tray LTWS storage tower, equipped with automated loading/unloading. The automatic sorting device then sorts and stacks parts of different shapes, sizes and weights. The LTWS delivers cycle times as quick as 50 sec., according to Salvagnini officials. It can work in multi-gripping mode, picking up several parts in sequence with the same gripping device, or in double-picking mode, where two gripping devices descend simultaneously to pick up two independent parts.