Yaskawa
A good example of Robotics specialist Yaskawa’s expansion into new manufacturing applications is their involvement in a state-of-the-art automated robotic painting technical center in Derby. The center represents a highly advanced automated painting solution because of collaboration between the center’s owners Peak Contracts Ltd, along with Yaskawa and paint supplier Graco.
The center offers the flexibility of a full turnkey solution for those requiring either a new automated facility, or the ability to upgrade to a current manual or automatic installation enabling customers to apply both solvent and water-based paints using Yaskawa Motoman’s painting robot and the Graco ProBell.
An important focus of the technical center is its support of the full turnkey approach including painting robots, electrostatics, rotary atomizers, air guns, up to 3k auto mix, paint mix and supply, complete booths, conveyor systems, 3D programming, safety planning and ATEX. Also, it can be used to provide customer training in all aspects of automated painting, from mixing and paint supply, through to robot programming and maintenance.
The engineers at Peak Contracts will work with 3D offline programming to understand the Yaskawa Motoman robot requirement in terms of reach and available cycle time. The 3D models which can be imported into Yaskawa MotoSim, ensure rapid reach studies and robot programming. This enables customers to choose from the wide range of Yaskawa robots to ensure the most suitable and cost-effective solution for each application.
The in-house design team will then be able to establish a booth design to house the required robots and equipment, together with the controls department to size and design any conveyor system of handling equipment required for the turnkey solution.
Peak Contracts offer full paint trials in the new center and working together with paint supply companies and the customer means that the full set of painting parameters can be tested helping to establish film builds, appearance and laydowns of the desired coating. The various settings of the Yaskawa robots, such as path speed, tool center point and atomizer settings can be calculated and approved together with all stakeholders in the project.
“Yaskawa Motoman offers manufacturers a wide range of robotic solutions for today’s automated paint finishing applications as demonstrated by this successful collaboration with Peak Contracts and their paint delivery partner Graco,” says UK Sales & Marketing Manager Jonny Grey commenting on the collaboration with Peak Contracts.