With the introduction of ASPS is now possible to automate the last part of the working cycle of the laser cutting machines, normally left to the manual operations.
ASPS is proposed in standard and dynamic version. The standard version of ASPS is suitable for most types of “nesting”, while the dynamic is required in the presence of productions which provide long and narrow cut pieces.
The only condition required to use these systems is that the pieces are not “micro-joined”, as it is advisable instead for the loading-unloading of whole sheet, have no connections with the support grid of the laser. So it is important the proper maintenance of the support grid to obtain high reliability of automatic unloading process. The use of the cut in common between different pieces, reduces cutting times and sometimes even the consumption of material, it also simplifies and improves the performance of the automatic unloading of single pieces.
The gripping tool is composed by a battery of suction cups activated in groups to adapt to various geometries of the different pieces to unload. The limited size of the pieces which can be unloaded with standard gripping tools is indicated in the technical data, but it is possible to define dedicated settings for particular types of cut pieces. The gripping tool has four axes of movement, three linear and one rotating, to allow the gripping of pieces placed in “nesting” with any orientation. Due to this flexibility, it is sufficient to define the gripping of each piece only once independently of its orientation in the cutting plane.
Thanks to the fact that increasing the number of pieces to unload also increases the necessary time to cut them, in the vast majority of cases the pieces unloading occurs in “masked time” according to the cutting operation.
Also for this robot the experience acquired in our installations allowed us to develop a series of checks and the refinement of some details, such as the detection of the exact position of the sheet or the control of the contact with the scrap, which guarantee the maximum effectiveness of the unloading process.
ASPS can be programmed directly with the dedicated language in case of repetitive nesting productions. In most practical cases, in order to allow the easy programming, we provide the ANTIL LOADER CAM offline software, which can be integrated in the cutting CAM or separated, depending on the preferences of the system’s operator.
