Ellison-Mini-Mover Part-Reject Inspection System
Ellison Technologies engineered this compact and effective turnkey system that inspects precision parts for critical measurements. The turnkey system uses a DN Solutions Lynx2100B lathe, a Doosan M1013 cobot, a Mini-Mover Uni-Mate® (conveyor and accumulator combo), a Keyence vision system and an air blast reject system.
According to Ellison Technologies’ Lower Midwest Group (NOH location), here’s the production and inspection sequence, from start to finish (below the video):
- Raw material is loaded into a vibratory bowl feeder – thousands of raw parts;
- The parts are oriented and fed to a conveyor where the raw part is positioned for a Doosan Collaborative M1013 Robot to pick from;
- After picking up the raw part the robot blows out the main spindle collet on a DN Solutions Lynx 2100B lathe and loads the part for OP10 machining;
- While the 1st part is being machined the robot picks up a second part from the inbound conveyor then waits in front of the DNSA Lynx lathe;
- Upon completion of the first OP10 part the robot removes the ½ finished part and loads the 2nd raw part and machining commences;
- While the 2nd raw part is being machined for OP10 the robot loads the first part into a Turnover Stand and the robot grabs the part from the opposite side for OP20;
- When the second OP10 part is finished the robot re-loads the first ½ finished part into the machine chuck for OP20 machining;
- During the OP20 machining the robot flips over the 2nd part and waits in front of the lathe.
- When the 1st part is completely machined the robot removes the finished part and re-loads the 2nd part for OP20 machining;
- While the 2nd part is being machined for OP20 the robot places the completed part on the Uni-Mate® conveyor for inspection.
Once the cobot deposits the parts onto the Uni-Mate® conveyor, the parts are funneled to the center of the belt. This aligns each part in field view of the Keyence camera. The camera is mounted over the conveyor to measure each part that passes underneath.
Good parts proceed to the end of the conveyor, where they’re offloaded onto the Uni-Mate® accumulator table. But rejected, out-of-tolerance parts don’t get that far. The air blaster blows bad parts off the belt, to isolate them into a separate reject bin.