Are Collaborative Robots The New Must-Haves for Metal Stamping and Punching?

In recent times, manufacturers around the world are showing an increasing interest in automating their production processes. They have good reasons to do so, as the use of collaborative robots can yield higher productivity, efficiency, lower costs in general.

Collaborative robots and their role in modern metal production

Even just about a decade ago, many manufacturers were reluctant to consider the use of robots in their production lines.

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It was mostly due to high costs, and the programming expertise that was necessary for setting up and modifying the actions of the collaborative robots. It becomes increasingly important for manufacturers to understand that even though automation might have been expensive years ago, now is the time to reconsider it. 

The high-level competition within robotics and automation has resulted in lower costs, and technological advancements have allowed companies to leverage these technologies and realize substantial benefits from them.

Manufacturers can use robotic solutions today to help their workforce with a host of tasks that are faster, safer, and cheaper this way. Metal punching and stamping are two examples of tasks, where robots can provide high efficiency and precision in the production process.

Stamping and Punching: What is the difference?

Talking about metal stamping means referring to the set of operations performed to obtain specific shapes on a workpiece. Basically, during the metal stamping process, an entire metal part with all the desired features worked into the end product can be achieved.

The cost of stamping is generally higher, and it is much better suited for mass production purposes when our goal is to produce entire metal parts.

Metal punching, on the other hand, is the process performed to achieve a specific shape, form on a metal part. Punching is better for the production of prototypes and small production quantities.

Robots can become invaluable additions to a manufacturer&#;s press line. But what exactly are these main benefits?

How can collaborative robots support stamping and punching processes? 

• Short changeovers

Traditionally, long changeover times (i.e.: 1,5-2 hours) were considered the standard.

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Imagine a massive metal part that has to be transferred to the next workstation manually. It not only demands a long time, but the task itself poses a considerable safety risk to workers too. With the support of automation, press lines can maintain flawless production as opposed to just idling, and waiting for the manual transfer to the next station. 

The equation is simple: short changeovers, mean more changeovers per day, which results in higher output.

• More flexibility

The introduction of cobots in connection with cobot-cells has helped manufacturers to increase their flexibility in the production process. Traditional robots typically require a relatively large working space, they need to be programmed by an expert, their perimeter needs to be guarded, and they are not easy to move around. 

Meanwhile, cobots can work alongside humans safely, be programmed without knowledge in programming, and can be moved easily around the production lines.

• High quality and data support

Advanced vision systems and high-resolution images allow collaborative robots to examine and evaluate the quality of work that was produced at the lines. This can provide fast, scalable, and precise feedback, which is essential to reduce the scrap produced and increase production quality.

Moreover, collaborative robots used in manufacturing are becoming smarter too. Through the use of AI applications in state-of-the-art robots, manufacturers can leverage the large amount of data collected during production and gain useful insights, helping them in optimizing the processes.

Manufacturers are still just exploring the vast opportunities robotic automation can provide them. Companies that follow these trends have a good chance of having an advantage over their competition in the long-run.

China is a big manufacturing country, many products are from our Chinese hands, however, with the effect of family planning, China's population has declined sharply, many enterprises are facing the difficult situation of recruitment, which is why to use stamping manipulator instead of manual work one of the important reasons, below, specifically listed the current situation of domestic stamping production line.
At present, the domestic automatic stamping line is mainly manual line, and the manual line is faced with the following problems: more than 1 layout, single operation, manual transmission, low production efficiency; 2 and many human factors, high defective products; 3. High energy consumption and high production cost; 4 Complex stamping site management, prone to industrial accidents; 5. Labor costs increase year by year.
This is also the reason why many companies began to introduce stamping mechanical arms, although China's labor costs in the world's depression, the world has moved factories to China, making China the world's factory. When China's labor costs are no longer low, there are many enterprises to move factories to countries with lower costs, but there are also many enterprises choose to use automated intelligent production to reduce labor costs, such as: IO Smith with automation to avoid rising labor costs. Another example, Foxconn's industrial robots have been sensational. Many production-intensive enterprises have already adopted full automation to replace the rising cost of human resources.
The reason is that the stamping robot has outstanding advantages and is necessary for the transformation of construction machinery manufacturing. The machine tool stamping manipulator can replace people in industrial production to do some monotonous, frequent and repetitive long-term operations, or operations in dangerous and harsh environments, such as stamping, pressure casting, heat treatment, welding, painting, plastic product forming, machining and simple assembly. In the atomic energy industry and other departments, complete the handling or process operation of materials harmful to human health.
It is understood that the industrial robots used in the field of construction machinery manufacturing mainly include: spot welding robots, assembly robots, handling robotic arms and stamping robots. Because robots take on many dangerous or boring tasks, many occupational diseases, injuries and the resulting high costs can be avoided; In addition, because the robot always completes its work in the same way, the product quality is very stable, which will also bring certain benefits to the enterprise; Robots can work 24 hours a day, the productivity of products can be predicted, and the inventory can be better controlled. Each cost savings in the total value of the product will provide the product with the ability to compete in various markets; Another advantage of robots is that they can be used for small batch production and have high flexibility.
The widespread use of robots is a very important way to achieve industrial automation and improve social production efficiency. In the past two years, under the background of the gradual disappearance of China's cheap labor advantage and the sharp rise in labor costs, the construction machinery industry "labor shortage", "high cost" and other factors are intertwined and superposition together, compressing the profit space of processing enterprises, highlighting the survival plight of small and medium-sized enterprises in the current industry, and also prompting potential and capable enterprises to find a new way out in the pains of transformation and upgrading. The market will be reshuffled. China's construction machinery industry is facing a shift to high-end, to undertake international advanced manufacturing, to participate in the international division of labor of the great challenge, "machine replacement" has been the general trend. With the development of China's economy, the reduction of population, stamping robots, loading and unloading robots, industrial robots, will be more and more favored by major factories, and will be more and more popular.