StrapMaster: A robotic band-strapping system

This paper presents a robotic system that performs the steel-strapping process of coils for the metals industry. In the metal coil manufacturing plant, the packaging of coil-product is conventionally performed by dedicated machines specially designed for different strapping modes, such as outer circumference, eye-cross/parallel, vertical, horizontal or sheet pack. In most cases in the current industry, several of these mode-specific strap machines are serially lined-up in order to perform the required strapping sequence. We developed a self-contained robotic system consisting of a pair of 6-dof articulated arms, where the two arms are cooperating with each other to perform three different types of strapping modes. Compared to the conventional machine setup, this robotic solution reduced the floor space to 30% and reduced the equipment cost down to 65%, yet met the cycle-time requirement. The steel-coil strapping process is described, and the conventional and robot method are detailed and analyzed in a technical and economical perspective.