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Product category: Process, instrumentation and automation control software
News Release from: Delmia | Subject: Igrip
Edited by the Engineeringtalk Editorial Team on 03 November 2003

CAM software helps with Nomad welding
project

Igrip has been used by Delmia's Scandinavian partner, Delfoi, to create the offline program and path data for a robot arm and robot transport vehicle (RTV) in the Nomad project demonstrator.

Igrip has been used by Delmia's Scandinavian partner, Delfoi, to create the offline program and path data for a robot arm and robot transport vehicle (RTV) in the Nomad project demonstrator Nomad aims to develop and demonstrate an autonomous, flexible, robotic welding system capable of fabricating individually customised products as easily and quickly as large multiples

This system was demonstrated earlier this month at the Fraunhofer Institute, Magdeburg, by the consortium behind its development: Caterpillar (Belgium), TWI (UK), Esab (Sweden), Delfoi (Finland), Reis Robotics (Germany), Fraunhofer Institut Fabrikbetrieb und Automatisierung (Germany), Robosoft (France) and Nusteel Structures (UK).

Heikki Aalto, Executive Vice President of Delfoi, commented: "The automation of the welding activity in an environment producing customised products has potentially far-reaching and wide-ranging economic benefits for many other industries such as construction, shipbuilding, off highway vehicle, structural fabrication, military vehicles, and heavy handling equipment.

The majority of these benefits arise through the ability to provide customers with high value-added products at competitive capital and operating costs".

During the demonstration of the Nomad system, the vision system (Fraunhofer IFF) recognised the component in the robot cell.

By matching the real image with three-dimensional CAD data, the system located the part and identified its position and orientation.

The Igrip simulation system (Delfoi) then created the offline program and path data for the Robot arm (Reis Robotics) and RTV (Robosoft).

The RTV approached the bridge component (Nusteel Structures) and carried out robot arm movements as if performing a weld.

In addition, positional multipass welding procedures with adaptive control (TWI) and welding consumables (Esab) are being developed.

These will be integrated into the system in time for the final demonstration, which will include the welding of an excavator stick (Caterpillar) and a bridge section (Nusteel Structures).

Heikki Aalto said: "It is our intention to automate Delmia's Igrip so that intervention is minimal, enabling all the generation of points and logic within minutes.

Our demonstrator has shown that all the diverse technologies work well together and although we had not calibrated the robot, the system moved it close to where it needed to be to carry out the welds".

The Nomad project derives its name from the nomadic nature of the robot system, though the official project title is: "Autonomous manufacture of large steel fabrications".

It aims to develop a demonstration system capable of fabricating steel structures in the five to 50t range without the need for special tooling and dedicated capital equipment.

It was launched in March 2001 and will finish in August 2004.

Nomad is a collaborative European Community Framework V project and is conducted under the Competitive and Sustainable Growth programme.

Keith Herman is a Senior Research and Development Engineer at Caterpillar and is also the Project's technical co-ordinator.

He explained: "The global structural steel fabrication market is buoyant, but increasingly competitive, with customers becoming ever more demanding about cost, quality, performance and lead-time.

There is also a shortage of skilled labour, which, when coupled with legislative pressure for safer working conditions, means that the creation of technologies capable of delivering flexible, automated welding is the only way forward".

"Typically, large-scale fabrications, such as earthmoving equipment and pedestrian bridges, will be many cubic meters in volume and weigh up to 50t.

Although we have limited the size of the parts we are welding in our demonstrator, we have developed a system that is easy to scale upwards.

Manual welding is highly flexible in terms of adaptation to size and shape, but is characterised by high labour costs, low production rates and variable quality.

Current automated welding processes produce high and consistent quality at high production rates, but lack the flexibility required for multiple product variants".

"At Caterpillar, we produce many standard variants of our machines.

For example, our hydraulic excavator adapts for logging, but we find that if the customisation becomes too great, the advantages of automation are lost.

Nomad should help us meet the demand for customisation without production costs spiralling".

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