CASE STUDIES

Sheet Metal Forming Company

Automated Punching of Sheet Metal Parts

This customer was having material handling issues due to the size and weight of their sheet metal blanks. Every operation would require 2-people to handle the product. This was creating safety hazards as well as being very labor intensive.

Our goal for this system was to reduce the amount of material handling required and allow 1 person to operate the system in a safe manner. We accomplished this by reducing the amount of times the product was physically touched from 2 times to zero. The product was now introduced from a previous operation directly into the cell in a stacked form. A robotic system with various stations processed the parts as needed and stacked them for use in the next operation. The operator was responsible for entering a part number in the HMI and moving the stacked parts in and out of the cell on wheeled carts. This system not only saved labor and material handling, but produced a more consistent product at a higher rate than the previous manual system.