Robot with World’s Heaviest Payload Assembles Railroad Axles - Mittler Bros. Machine & Tool

Railroad axle assembly: http://robot.fanucamerica.com/....Products/Robots/asse

FANUC America Authorized System Integrator Mittler Brothers Machine & Tool won the 2016 NTMA Technology Award for this, their railroad axle assembly system that utilizes FANUC’s R-2000iC robot, and the FANUC M-2000iA robot – world renowned for having the heaviest payload of any industrial robot in the world.

The system starts as the FANUC M-2000iA/1200 robot finds the end of the axle in order to determine where to pick up the particular axle in Queue. The robot picks up the axle and places it into the Axle Lubricating station. The axle revolves in the lubrication station, and spray nozzles automatically spray the appropriate lubrication on the bearing and wheel journals. The robot picks the axle up from the lubrication station and places it into the 200-ton wheel press gripper. The robot withdraws from the wheel press and picks up a single wheel from the wheel transfer station. It places the wheel into the wheel press’s self-centering chuck, withdraws, and the press presses the single wheel onto the axle while recording the press force curve.

The M-2000iA robot then picks the second wheel from the wheel transfer station and also places it into the wheel press’s self-centering chuck, withdraws, and the press presses the second wheel onto the axle while recording the press force curve.
The station lift cylinders lower the axle and wheels down onto the rail, while the transfer station walks the wheel set out of the wheel press and into the bearing press station.

Motorized lifts and conveyors transfer pallets of bearings into place for the FANUC R-2000iC robot. This iRVision-equipped FANUC R-2000iC robot views the pallet of bearings and determines the appropriate height and location for picking the caps and bearings. The robot picks the bearing, cap and fasteners, and places them onto a post for separation. The robot then picks the cap and fasteners, and places them onto a motorized declining conveyor for the operators to install at the end of the cell. Then the robot picks the bearing mandrel tooling from the bearing press and places it into the bearing. The robot picks the bearing and mandrel tooling, revolves from a vertical position to a horizontal position, then places it onto the bearing press mandrel. Once the R-200iC robot has emptied the bearing pallet, the pallet conveyor transfers the empty pallet to the end of the conveyor, lowers to another motorized conveyor located on a lower elevation and conveys the pallet onto a conveyor lift for safe removal by the operator.

The 100-ton bearing press presses both bearings onto the axle simultaneously and the press forces are recorded. The station lift lowers the wheelset back onto the rail, and the transfer station walks the wheelset out of the bearing press and into the queue prior to releasing into the multi-spindle torqueing station. Operators man two 3-spindle Atlas Copco torqueing nut runners, and scan the wheelset component bar codes for data storage and record keeping. Finally, a kick out mechanism rises and rolls the wheelset out of the assembly cell and to the next railcar assembly process.

FANUC America Authorized System Integrator Mittler Brothers Machine & Tool is a proficient industrial automation robotics integrator and custom manufacturer of industrial automation machinery for manufacturing companies and industrial businesses. Contact the experts at Mittler Brothers today with your design and build machinery projects involving industrial automation with robotics integration. Call (800) 467-2464 or visit their website at http://www.mittlerbros.com.