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Faster and better assembly can be achieved, thanks to smarter equipment. BY RAY CHALMERS / Contributing Editor "Automotive assembly is going to change more in the next 10 to 15 years than in the last 50." Neil Dueweke, general manager, Automotive Components and New Domestic Group; Body Structures Group, FANUC America ( fanucamerica.com ) bases that statement on obvious drivers such as continuously stringent CAFE standards and the emergence of new mate- rials, and those more subtle, such as advancing engineering education and the computing power to drive new changes. "It's a confuence of events I haven't seen in the last 30 years," the industry veteran says. A confuence of resources in itself, FANUC America combines the former FANUC Robotics with FANUC CNC controls and ROBOMACHINE machining centers for a multi- pronged approach to assembly problems. "There's no one-size- fts-all answer," confrms Louis Finazzo, general manager, Automotive Components Sales and ROBODRILL. "There are hundreds of mechanical arms with payloads from 0.5 kg to 2500 kg [1.2 to 5511 lb.] combined with encoders, end-of-arm tooling, and processing variables to achieve tremendous efciency gains." Rightsizing welding processes is one example. "Resistance welding used to be air- or hydraulic-driven, with sensors that told the robot to squeeze to a given pressure and fre the current," Finazzo explains. The result was over-welding on a scale of 30% on average. FANUC has developed what it calls "Learning Vibration Control" (LVC). Combining cameras and software, gakushu (studying/learning) robots equipped with the LVC package can adjust to fne variables in fxturing or other conditions in real time and adjust their motion for up to 15% cycle-time improvements in spot welding processes, all with quality checks that result in tolerances not reachable manually. Intelligent interference checks avoid collisions in shared workspaces. "This is a real-world case of the robot being able to fne-tune itself to save a second or two, not only in spot- welding, but material-handling and other areas," Dueweke says. Another innovation coming out of Rochester Hills R&D; is ROBOGUIDE, FANUC's simulation software that is capable of calculating the actual cycle time of a robot. Data-Driven Assembly Technology 38