New robot at MIT adds capability

The new ABB Robot flanked by manager Garry Robinson (left), and technologist engineer Roger van Ryn.

Manukau Institute of Technology (MIT) has added to its education and training capability yet again with the addition of a new robot for training automation engineers and Bachelor of Engineering Technology students.
The new robot has been supplied by ABB and is suitable for a wide variety of industrial applications. These include product handling and assembly, welding, packaging, palletising and many more tasks specific to a variety of production manufacturing processes. The robot comes with the very latest ‘Robot Studio’ software which will be used in the training room (in simulation mode) and in the workshop. Graeme Paulin of ABB says ‘Robot Studio’ makes it straightforward to achieve very complex moves and precise positioning without in-depth programming knowledge. “We are very pleased that MIT will be teaching students to use the software.”
The six-axis ABB robot will be sited at MIT’s Centre for Mechatronics in East Tamaki. There, it will add to the Centre’s existing suite of training robots which includes stepper-driven and servo-driven three-axis portal robots along with a Mitsubishi six-axis robot operating on an assembly line. All are used for training Mechatronics students.
Technologist engineer Roger Van Ryn will install and commission the new robot in the coming months.
Manukau Institute of Technology has been teaching Robotic Automation for many years now but this year is the first time that robotics has become part of the Bachelor of Engineering Technology Degree. The robotics paper is a level seven paper for degree students majoring in Mechatronics.
Centre Manager Garry Robinson says the addition of the ABB robot will mean the Centre can provide a comprehensive range of the latest industrial robots to provide excellent hands-on training in their principles, applications and programming. An example of this is the recent employment by John Brooks Ltd of Christiaan van Lingen, onto their technical team. The MIT graduate impressed the company with his programming ability on the MIT robots.
The three-axis portal robots are controlled by Trio Motion Coordinators which are one of the best motion coordinators in the world. They are programmed with Motion Perfect 2 software provided by Trio. Robinson says, “This software gives the students an excellent education on programming in a text-based language and an understanding of the important principles involved.”
The assembly station which the Mitsubishi robot forms part of, was supplied by Festo New Zealand and its staff continue to support the Centre and its equipment. Chris Mathieson, manager of Festo New Zealand, likes to work closely with the Mechatronics Centre because of the valuable development and innovation it generates. He is very impressed with the Bachelor of Engineering Technology Development projects completed there. Two of these – a comparison between servo electric and pneumatic linear motion control systems for the rapid handling of milk bottles and improvements to a chip blending plant – have recently been completed by Centre students.

Successful Centre projects
Shyamal Naidu, a Bachelor of Engineering Technology Development student employed by Festo earlier this year, compared servo electric and pneumatic linear motion control systems for the rapid handling of milk bottles. His project was for a company involved in building machinery for the dairy industry.
He used MIT’s high speed camera to determine the cause of occasional problems encountered when loading crates with milk bottles coming off a filling line. The problems were intermittent falling over of the bottles and spilling of milk when the top pops off from the speed and inertia of the process.
The process of loading crates with rows of bottles is extremely fast and intermittent problems are impossible to detect and analyse with the naked eye. There are many variables, for example bottle size and capacity vary from 300 millilitres to three litres in five sizes. The crate size is the same for all sizes of bottle but the number of bottles per row and the number of rows per crate varies in order to load the crate to capacity.
The bottles come from the filling line in a continuous stream and are pushed onto a plate one row at a time until a complete load is on the plate. For the two-litre bottles a complete load is three rows of three, i.e. nine bottles. The plate is retracted rapidly to allow the bottles to fall into the crate below. The difficulties encountered arise from the mechanism and control system used to push each row of three bottles onto the plate at high speed.
With cycle times of 1.5 seconds per row of bottles, it is essential to control acceleration rate, speed and deceleration rate to create the optimum motion profile. Shyamal assembled, connected and programmed the required controlling equipment to compare the performance of two linear motion systems available from Festo, using a test jig and a high-speed camera. The two systems are the DCNE (electrical) and the DCNI (pneumatic). He connected the two systems independently and logged all the data which had collected with the several different motion profiles created.
The company is planning on using the results of Shyamal’s research in the design of a new generation machine.
Jason Webber, automation engineer for AHI Roofing, has also just completed his Bachelor of Engineering Technology development project.
AHI Roofing needed to improve the operation of its chip blending plant which applies stone chips in a variety of colours on to the metal roofing tiles they manufacture. Jason says he really appreciates the hands-on approach used by MIT staff. The project includes the integration of weigh feeders (fitted with variable speed drives), programmable logic controllers and a human machine interface using touch screens.
A new system has been designed to give more accurate control over the different chip colour mixes used for coating the roof tiles and accessories. The new system will use three weigh feeder stations supplied by EMC Industrial Group Ltd. The weigh feeders have a load cell under their conveyor and vary the speed of the conveyor to maintain an accurate flow rate.
New PLC (Programmable Logic Controller) code has been written for the Omron PLC to control the weigh feeders and to interface with a new Omron touch screen. Programming of the screen is also complete and has been carried out in consultation with both production engineers and operators to ensure that the Human Machine Interface is of the highest standard in terms of its ability to provide control and to monitor the process.
A new Modbus network has been installed, configured and commissioned to provide the required communication for system control and performance feedback of the weigh feeders. Modbus is used between the weigh feeder controller and its indicator and also between the Omron PLC and the weigh feeder. This is being used in conjunction with Ethernet/IP which is used for communication between the PLC and the touch screen and the plant wide network.
The system has been successfully tested with a single unit (one of the three) and is due for final commissioning in January/February 2009.