Universal Robots is featuring the Q-Span® Workstation case study in their collection of user stories about collaborative robots in manufacturing and quality.
Universal Robots has created a new and expanded case study exploring how the Q-Span Workstation helps OptiPro Systems add more features and value to their optical manufacturing machines. From the video:
Measuring the parts in-process is vital to the manufacturing process says [Metrology Coordinator at OptiPro Systems, David] Mohring: “Instead of producing a bunch of parts that do not get measured until later, in-process measurement catches issues right away, which reduces scrap and makes sure we don’t continue the manufacturing process while we’re making bad parts.”
Mike Cahill, Mechanical Engineer at OptiPro Systems explains how a Q-Span Workstation can measure glass cylinders coming out of the company’s OptiSonic grinding machine. The cylinder is made by a coring drill that, like a mini jack hammer, oscillates through a large stack of glass.
“OptiSonic technology significantly prolongs tool life, but it is inevitable that the diamond tool drill will wear over time as part of the grinding process, so the actual work piece size resulting from that fabrication process will vary,” he says. “Having the Q-Span Workstation immediately measure core thickness of each cylinder enables us in an unmanned fashion to catch out-of-tolerance issues right away and change drills or feed rate if need be.”
This means reducing scrap of precious materials. Kyle Wood gives an example of just how precious: “Several of our customers use germanium, which is worth more than gold in raw weight, so we’re talking thousands of dollars in savings,” he says, also emphasizing the delicate part handling provided by the Q-Span Workstation.
“Using the cobot, our customers now avoid brittle material breaking and sharp edges getting fractured or chipping from manual handling. The Q-Span Workstation enables an unmanned operation that can produce work pieces in the thousands when the lot sizes are large, it would take a manual operator six steps to do what a Q-Span System can accomplish in one cycle.
“Added to that, we take the human variance out of the equation,” he says. “We can also measure a variety of different parts without changing the gripper, which allows us to quickly move from one project to the next.”
