At this year's Motek trade fair, Mitsubishi Electric together with Engmatec will be presenting a high-speed screw-fastening station for inline operation as part of an assembly line. Within the system, a Mitsubishi Electric dual-arm SCARA robot from the RP series performs the handling and tightening of the screws using a vacuum suction unit. The compact system can handle ten screws in just 18 seconds.
The Engmatec system uses a fastening method based on the pick-and-place principle incorporating vacuum suction units. It also includes a Mitsubishi Electric RP-5ADH robot with corresponding CR1D robot controller. The robot picks up the screws to be handled and tightens them at any position on a switch panel.
The screw-fastening system has a cycle time of approximately 0.8 seconds which means that, including handling, it can handle ten screws in 18 seconds. The system controller also accepts the tightening torque and angle of rotation data for each screw.
The RP-series dual-arm SCARA robots are high-performance systems which have been specially designed for micro-handling during the production of watches, mobile telephone or hearing aids, for example. The RP-5ADH is suitable for handling tasks requiring a load capacity of up to five kilograms and operates with a repetition accuracy of ± 0.01 millimetres in directions x, y and z.
