Wavin is a European supplier of plastic piping systems for the water, wastewater, and plumbing industry. They have three robot cells in their injection molding and assembly departments, each with different vision systems that needed to be updated and streamlined to have a similar interface. This is a necessary step to ensure the different vision systems work together efficiently. To achieve this, Wavin sought the assistance of a qualified engineering partner.
Wavin's primary challenge was to unify and modernize their vision systems, ensuring a consistent interface across diverse systems. Moreover, they had to manually manage difficult-to-handle items, leading to inefficiency and wasted time. To address these issues, they required an automated system capable of locating, identifying, and gripping these items, resulting in improved efficiency and reduced manual labor.
DIS/CREADIS assisted Wavin in selecting and replacing hardware, designing new vision software, and designing a shared interface for the three vision systems. Two of the robot cells had the hardware, software, and interface upgraded and are now able to do a complete 3D scanning of the entire surface in a moment. From the 3D information, an item is located, and the coordinates are sent to the robot to grab the item. The third robot cell kept the up-to-date hardware but had the software and interface replaced.
One of the key features of the new system is a simple and uniform procedure for learning new items. To teach the machine about a new item, all it takes is a CAD-file, where the robot’s grabbing point is marked, and a setting of 4-5 parameters that can be left in the default setting. The vision system handles everything else and directs the robot to the grabbing point, unless the item is positioned in a way that makes it impossible to grab. In this case, an alternative grabbing point can be learned by creating another CAD-file where the alternative grabbing point is marked.
“We have worked with DIS/CREADIS several times over the past 10 years, and once again it has been a good cooperation. We chose DIS/CREADIS for this task based on their strong knowledge within vision, and because they had the necessary test facilities required for the task. It is exciting to work with vision systems, but also quite complex, it is a technology that progresses constantly, so although the way we made the system has already evolved, our set up is how we want it to be,” says Jesper Bjerre, Production Manager Wavin Group.
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