Automa­tionAuto­mate – but done right!

More produc­tivity, flex­i­bility and inde­pen­dence: Those who rely on automa­tion can gain advan­tages. Machine Tending in partic­ular brings momentum to produc­tion. SCHUNK offers not only the neces­sary compo­nents, but also the appli­ca­tion exper­tise to inte­grate them opti­mally into any manu­fac­turing processes.

A spindle runtime of up to 8,000 hours a year? What many people have only dreamed of until now is currently just within our reach with clever automa­tion. Only Machine Tending makes it possible to fully exploit their poten­tial and opti­mize upstream and down­stream processes. It is impor­tant that the automa­tion solu­tion matches the produc­tion envi­ron­ment. And this is where Markus Michel­berger, Head of Sales Clamping Tech­nology at SCHUNK Mengen, and his colleagues come into play: “We can offer the right compo­nents for all types of machine tool automa­tion, we are very familiar with appli­ca­tions, and we know how produc­tion works.”

“We can offer the right compo­nents and under­stand our customers’ appli­ca­tions. This is why they receive compo­nents and exper­tise from a single source.”

Markus Michel­berger, Head of Sales Clamping Tech­nology at the SCHUNK loca­tion in Mengen

The shortage of skilled workers and increasing times of absence, small batch sizes with high part vari­ance and increasing quality require­ments as well as time and cost pres­sure are not just recent chal­lenges that contract manu­fac­turers have to face. SCHUNK there­fore began years ago to make its prod­ucts fit for the require­ments of auto­mated machine tool loading and unloading. “To be successful in the highly compet­i­tive market, customers not only have to make their produc­tion more effec­tive and cost-effi­cient, they also have to create an attrac­tive and healthy working envi­ron­ment due to the labor market situ­a­tion in order to attract and retain employees in the long term. Automa­tion is the key to this.” Depending on the work­piece, batch size, produc­tion process and machine, SCHUNK offers five types of automa­tion. “Customers who decide to auto­mate their produc­tion have already taken the most impor­tant step,” explains Markus Michel­berger. “As your partner for produc­tivity, we support and advise you in putting the possible indi­vidual parts together to form a coherent whole.”

Work­piece and pallet automa­tion

The R‑C2 from SCHUNK combines the advan­tages of work­piece and pallet automa­tion. The work­piece lying in the storage rack is gripped with the R‑C2 and is clamped at the same time. The clamping force block with the clamped work­piece is then loaded into the quick-change pallet system of the machine like a pallet.

Lean automa­tion

Lean automa­tion describes a flex­ible and afford­able method of auto­mated machine loading by using already avail­able func­tions of the machine tool intel­li­gently. The raw and finished parts tray is located within the travel area of the machine. With the help of a gripper with spindle inter­face, work­piece handling can thus take place within the machine work­space.

Pallet automa­tion

The pallet automa­tion concept is the right choice for clamping heavy and complex work­pieces and for ensuring high clamping accu­racy require­ments. Here, work­pieces are set up on pallets outside the machine and then loaded into the system as a complete package. High clamping force and preci­sion combined with a compact design – these are the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the TANDEM3 clamping force blocks.

Work­piece automa­tion

With work­piece automa­tion, a machine can be loaded even with raw parts from an external storage system, when unat­tended. After machining, the finished or semi-finished part can be removed from the clamping device and deposited in the storage unit.

Flex­ible Manu­fac­turing System (FMS)

Flex­ible manu­fac­turing systems are multi-machine systems for machining work­pieces. The indi­vidual machine tools are connected to one another via a connected trans­port and storage system to enable an auto­mated mate­rial flow. Tomb­stones from SCHUNK and the versa­tile port­folio of clamping tools are compo­nents of complete solu­tions that offer perfect machine utiliza­tion with high flex­i­bility.

More videos in our YouTube playlist:
Machine Tending

You can find more infor­ma­tion in the flyer:
Machine Tending 101

Learn more:
www.schunk.com/machine-tending

Issue 01|24

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