AMTES brings mobility to fabricating automation
Repetitive tasks in a fabricating environment can be dull, dirty, and dangerous. These three criteria make a perfect case for a robot—even a mobile robot. And for this reason and many others, AMADA America announces the Autonomous Mobile Transport Engineering System, or AMTES (see Figure 1).
AMTES represents a giant leap forward in the shop. You may be familiar with automated guided vehicles (AGVs) which have been in factories and warehouses for decades. These systems run over a wire embedded in the floor, or magnetic tape. AMTES is part of the migration toward autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), a big improvement over AGVs if for no other reasons than they navigate without wires or tape, and can move around temporary obstacles.
The AMADA America implementation is what puts “Engineering System” into AMTES. Central to the company’s “blank-to-bend” strategy, AMTES knows what jobs are ready and when, and where they are going. It works within the overall fabricating system.
A fit for the automated environment
The main component of keeping things moving in the blank-to-bend strategy is the AMTES autonomous mobile robot. However, it exists in a habitat that is full of automation. As the demonstration at FABTECH will show, AMTES is much more than a transport device.
In an environment that will closely match what you see at FABTECH, an AMTES application might look like the following:
- The REGIUS 3015 AJ 12kW laser uses AMADA’s AMS CLT and the AMADA TK 3015 L to offload blanks from the sheet and places them on pallets.
- AMTES transports the pallet of lasered parts to the EGB 1303 ARse load station.
- The load station automatically places the lasered parts into the bending operation, and the EGB 1303 ARse bends them.
- Bend parts are placed on a pallet at the unload station.
- AMTES carries the pallet of bent parts to the Buffer Station for later use
AMTES manages work-in-process, offers productivity improvement, and requires less skilled operators. Location and inventory management are done via AMNC 4ie control, with which AMTES communicates.
As for the transport job, AMTES uses LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) to move about the shop floor. You teach AMTES by manually driving it on the shop floor, and you can easily maintain it too. It complies with international safety standards, and can be trusted to coexist with people. It also deals with slight obstructions (it can climb over a 15 mm obstruction like laser scrap or a thin board) and can climb a 5% slope.
You will see the biggest gains from the entire system that AMTES serves. With AMTES, you can—finally—fully automate factory processing and tracking. AMTES crosses lines and brings automation to multiple systems.