Path planning of robot assisted sheet metal bending to improve productivity

The handling of material is a high resource consuming task in many different manufacturing industries. Global demand for material-handling products is projected to rise by 7.0 percent annually until 2014. Advanced automation and robotics technologies can enhance the productivity of this process, guaranteeing at the same time the highest level of safety for workers. The sheet metal bending operation is very time consuming and laborious process when done manually. Because during the bending operation, the space for maneuvering a sheet metal part is very small, collisions between the part and bending tools are likely to occur. When a robot is used to handle the part, the role of an automatic path-planning tool becomes more significant. In this study the robot is programmed to bend the sheet metal part, which is done by using teach pendant. With this teach pendant the robot is first taught the optimum path so that it can perform the required task within minimal time for the handling as well as feeding the part to the bending machine. The robot then moves in the same path in the remote mode as it is taught when the robot is interfaced with PLC using human machine interference. Finally the robot assisted bending was able to achieve an increased productivity.The productivity results, throughput rate, comparison between manual and automated process results and cost savings are included.