The new bending solution from AMADA America (Buena Park, CA), the EGB6013ARce, is a member of an enhanced breed of press brakes from AMADA America. It fairly bristles with automation, it uses less energy than a similarly equipped press brake, and brings new capabilities to the operator/programmer.
If you follow the logic of the design of this system to its conclusion, you come close to a “black box” concept; blanks are put into one side, parts come out the other. The difference of course is that you have control over what’s happening inside that black box at any given time, whether by preparatory programming or intervention on the fly.
To nudge that concept just a little more, the versatile AMNC 4ie control that is standard with the system allows you to create “relays,” or relay runs that combine successive jobs into a single job. For example, let’s say you had three parts to make for a bigger job. Rather than stop after every job, the relay runs allow you to just continue; the robot out front will setup the tools, create the part, tear down the tooling, perhaps change the gripper for the next job, do the new setup…you get the idea. Well, that’s what we did, eventually, in testing this system.
The basics of the system
At its simplest, the system comprises the EGB 6013e press brake, a transparent safety enclosure, a tracked robot, a live tooling storage area, carts for inbound blanks, and a conveyor system for parts.
This press brake features a servo/electric drive system, and that contributes to its reduced need for hydraulic oil (and a 20% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions). Among other things it also has an automatic electric crowning system and a three-finger backgauge (and one finger can be used at times as a side gauge).
The safety enclosure assures clearance from the robot, which moves vigorously between the bed of the press brake and the tooling storage area. Speaking of the robot, it has regular stops on its daily route: the two mentioned in the previous sentence, plus the gripper change area, the air cleaning area (for debris and dust), the rotation area (which rotates a punch if necessary), the carts for blank pickup, the conveyor system for offloading, the thickness gauge when making sure it only has one piece of metal and no more, and a drop box if it does have more than one blank.
The carts are pretty simple, but the three carts offer combined room for six separate blanks.
Let’s get to work
Three parts comprise our work today. One is fairly simple, one is very small with exacting tolerances, and one is a vertical presentation to the robot. This is the perfect time for you to meet our technical host, AMADA’s Bending Applications Engineer, Marcos Cruz. Let’s discover what he has in store for us in this and successive videos:
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AMADA America offers automated and robotic systems of many different stripes; it has done so for years. Never has the company offered a robotic system with so many stops along its path, including functioning as the operator. This is a key departure. So many systems automate the tooling setup and teardown but this one also automates the function of the operator. We will see about it this function in our next video:
One bit of information about the system’s self-protection: like many automated press brakes, it has a mechanism for making sure it only presents one blank at a time to the press brake. It does this through a two-step process: 1) a magnetic system discourages anything other than a single blank pickup; and 2) the thickness is verified at a spot in the middle of the enclosure. The robot holds the blank under a probe. The correct distance (thickness) is taken from the programming of the job and the material being used. Other mechanisms have been tried through the years—paper in between each metal blank, bending before pickup, blowing air sideways through the stack of blanks. AMADA America reports great success with this magnetic methodology.
We are introduced to the second blank in this next video (which also shows the magnetic system). Cruz takes us through the two topics and shares his expertise:
In this next segment we start to get a little fancy. Cruz does a relay at the AMNC 4ie control, more or less stitching the jobs together (in this case, part 2 and part 3) to run as one continuous job. Although I’ve seen various iterations of “lights out” type performance, I don’t remember a press brake ever having the ability to run consecutive jobs like this. Although you can change the tooling contained in the storage area, it is assumed that 90 feet of tooling will keep you bending for a while.
As to the two parts coming up, part 2 is the small blank (maybe it reminds you vaguely of the A10 Warthog) which will get even smaller and get folded back onto itself. Part 3 is also on the delicate side, and the blank is presented to the robot in vertical fashion.
Let’s check it out on video:
And now, a very short video that gives us a closeup look at part 2 and its complexity, tolerances, and accuracy:
And now, as a kind of grand robotic finale, we put all three jobs together into a relay run and pushed the button. We used the opportunity to get some different perspectives of the bending that we thought would add some visual interest for viewers. Here is the final relay run, again with Cruz narrating:
A few notes
First, thanks to AMADA America for having me out to the Los Angeles Technical Center (and North America HQ) in Buena Park, CA. Thanks also to Marcos Cruz for serving as our technical guide.
And keep in mind that what we have just seen is a bit of a specialized solution; it tends toward the small and accuracy plays a key role in its success. No wind turbine towers made here. This solution and other new solutions will be shown at the AMADA America booth in Fabtech Orlando Oct. 15-17.
More information: www.amada.com/america