Armatec Survivability/Ottobock Healthcare
Application: Trimming/Milling
Industry: Military/Medical

Robots are often underestimated in manufacturing circles as being inaccurate and dismissed as only suitable for welding or pick and place applications. With better accuracy machine designs and improved calibration methods now allowing robots to provide tolerances of 0.1mm/0.005in or less, robots are no longer uncommon in machining type applications. In addition, off-line programming (OLP) suites offer features that can take advantage of better robot tolerances and produce robot trajectories from CAD/CAM data. "Being able to create toolpaths directly from our designer's solid CAD models has significantly improved the accuracy of our carbon fiber components."
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AV&R Vision & Robotics
Application: Deburring
Industry: Aircraft Engines

The de-burring of combustion chambers for aircraft engines is about as complex a machining job as it gets, requiring tracing detailed trajectories over more than 600 features, using 3 or 4 different tools on each. AV&R has developed a broad range of expertise in enabling robots to perform complex tasks such as this, achieving high repeatability, increased speed and enhanced precision. But manually programming the robot is a painstaking job. Aerospace manufacturers are under extreme pressure to reduce new product introduction times. "We needed to shorten the path teaching cycle; there had to be a better way."
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Flow Automation
Application: Trimming/Milling
Industry: Automotive

Flow Applications manufactures and integrates six-axis robot systems into automotive interior trim applications such as floor carpeting, door panels and instrument panels. The company is forging new ground with off-line programming to eliminate costly downtime. Using CAD/CAM-based programming, a job that may have taken half a day to program in the past can now take as little as 15 minutes and operators and machines can remain in production.
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General Atomics Aeronautical Systems
Application: Carbon Composite Trimming
Industry: Military

General Atomics had acquired an impressive waterjet robotic work cell - an ideal solution for trimming the 30-foot carbon/epoxy composite wing assemblies of their unmanned aircraft system (UAS). When it came time to upload cutting patterns from their CAD files however, they came to the disconcerting realisation that developing tool trajectories for a 7-axis robot work cell directly from CAD was uncharted territory. The significant investment made in their robot equipment, as well as their capability to satisfy their production commitments, was at risk.
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Weber Aircraft
Application: Trimming/Milling
Industry: Aerospace

Weber Aircraft is one of the leading manufacturers of commercial aircraft seats for airlines and major aircraft manufacturers worldwide. In recent years, they have faced tremendous downward pressure on price while being determined to maintain their excellent and hard-earned reputation for product quality and customer satisfaction. A robotic-based routing cell was the right technical and economic answer to meet these objectives, but integrating the robot workcell into their existing manufacturing engineering process was a problem. Weber needed to be able to program their robot with the same ease, flexibility and efficiency as they programmed their CNC machines.
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