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| People | Applications and Manufacturing Systems: Application for Workcells |
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| Given below are five typical potential applications of workcells in manufacturing fields. |
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Workcell is applied in the process involving a huge amount of machining operations such as handling, drilling, and riveting. These kind of process usually has a lot of products change, task rearrangement and resource reallocating.
Under the conventional manufacturing environment, a lot of time and money are cost to replace the function-specified equipment and process. however, through the modular design, offline / online configuration management, workcell itself can implement resource reconfiguration and reallocating to meet the task and requirements, thus save time and money greatly, avoid manufacturing system outdated.
Furthermore, with fault tolerance methods applied, workcell can make itself a robust and small MTBF(Mean Time Between Failure) system. Below are some typical applications:
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| Surface Painting/Cleaning |
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- Large scale
- Uniform paint application
- Rapid turn around
- As built surface variations
- Self-referencing operations
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| Ship Structure Welding |
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- Ultimate batch manufacture
- Complex weld array
- High manpower demands
- Quality control essential
- Low cost / Portable / Light weight
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| Panel Drilling |
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- Expensive, rigid jigs
- Jig prevents product redesign
- Hundreds of holes
- Accuracy of 0.01" required
- Drilling forces deform robot
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| Precision Machining |
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- Numerous complex skin shapes
- Jig guides tools, Resists forces
- Jigs are expensive and invariant
- Jigs are logistics nightmare
- Acurracy requirement of 0.01"
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| Nose Cone Assembly |
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- Numerous manual operations
- Jigs dedicated to one subassembly
- Consume excess factory space
- Jigs cost up to $1,600,000
- Ensures product obsolescence
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