A new automated production line at Auping

Industrial robotization can lead to several benefits, such as cost savings, quality improvement and control, and increased efficiency. It also often solves personnel shortages. Hollander Techniek offers various robotization solutions for the manufacturing industry. A telling example is its contribution to Auping's future-proof circular mattress factory.

"Companies can come to us with all their robotization issues, from design to realization and maintenance," says Ronald Vollenbroek. He is a work planner at Hollander Techniek, a Dutch family business that in 49 years has grown from installer to total installer and system integrator. 

Special movements

Mattress manufacturer Royal Auping knocked on Hollander Techniek's door for its new circular mattress line. "Together with Machinefabriek Geurtsen, we joined forces in the joint venture Robotize. The goal? To realize a fully robotized production line for circular mattresses." It was a challenging project. "The robotic line must be able to produce a large number of different mattress variants, while for each mattress different parts are glued together layer by layer. To finish it off, another layer of foam is glued around it. As a result, the robot makes unusual movements, rotating objects measuring 1.80 by 2.30 meters in two directions up to 270 degrees without any problems."

On site

This also means that the cabling and cable routing must be able to handle the movements and high speeds. "For the cabling we therefore called on igus, which specializes in this," says Vollenbroek. Roderick Mollema, technical account manager at igus explains, "In order to tailor the total package - the cabling and triflex cable tracks specially developed for robot applications - to the application, we first entered all the parameters in a configurator. With the current technology, we can then map the rotations and movements well in 3D models so that we have a solid basis as a starting point. Fine-tuning is done on site by having the robot perform its movements at slow speed. Where necessary, the triflex track can still be easily shortened or extended and the cables are provided with strain relief."

Weight

"These robots are not standard machines that are sold a number of times," Vollenbroek continued. "For example, weight also played an important role in this project. The robot performs fast movements, while the gripper and the object to be gripped are already heavier variants." Mollema: "For this reason - and also to work as cost-efficiently as possible - a linear traction system with 70 centimeters extra length was chosen instead, just enough for the rotation of the head." The new production line has now been commissioned at Auping. It is largely robotized and automatically controlled. "This allows Auping to roll circular mattresses off the line efficiently and in large numbers - up to 600 per week," Vollenbroek said.

Stone Strips

He names another special project where robotization plays an important role. "In order to make the building of facade elements more sustainable, VKP, which specializes in prefabricated construction, wanted robotic gluing of facade strips in its factory. Where in traditional conditions workers with protective clothing manually provide a facade with facade strips in 18 hours, our robot can do this in 20 minutes fully automated. The Delta robot for fast pick and place tasks that we chose for this purpose can cover an area of 1.5 meters. It takes the stone strips and glues them with the right pressure at the right position, with a tenth of a millimeter accuracy. In other words, a lot of sensors are needed on the robot head, which means that there is also a lot of cabling involved in a limited space." Mollema: "Since you are dealing with adhesive vapors, standard PVC cable is out of the question here. In these circumstances, PUR or TPE is suitable as the outer jacket, taking into account the bending radius. Due to the limited space, we have split the cabling into individual conductors so that a more compact composition is possible." The robot will be commissioned this year.

Collaboration

Hollander Techniek and igus have been working together for several years. Vollenbroek: "The lines of communication are very short and the cooperation runs very smoothly. For regular projects, the online configurator of igus is sufficient to place orders. No extra expertise is needed here. But for the special projects, it is nice to have a good discussion partner who thinks along in terms of possibilities."