Machine tool companies have entered the field of robotics

The correlation between machine tool manufacturing and robot manufacturing technology is very large. The key application of industrial robots is motion control, and motion control is an important factor in ensuring the accuracy of machine tools. In recent years, the enthusiasm of machine tool companies to intervene in the manufacture of industrial robots has increased. Especially CNC system manufacturers, such as Huazhong CNC and Guangzhou CNC. Guangzhou CNC is committed to "producing robots that consumers can afford" on the premise of guaranteeing full-featured robots and stable and reliable performance. Guangzhou CNC has been involved in the research and development of industrial robots a few years ago and has made breakthrough progress: The company will first use dozens of robots for mass production in its own production workshop.

Not only CNC manufacturing companies, but also machine tool companies are very interested in the field of robots. For example, Dalian Machine Tool held this year's Sixth China Network, digitalization and decentralization of servo drive technology, and practical application of multi-sensor fusion technology. The optimization of environmental design and the flexibility of operations, as well as the networking and intelligence of the system. This is the direction and development trend of domestic high-end machine tool product upgrades. Machine tool companies have mastered these technologies and it is inevitable to enter the field of robotics. However, it is necessary to comprehensively balance the advantages of their own companies in terms of technology, brand, capital, and market to position and develop robot projects.

China's robotics industry is still very weak, and robotics still has a long way to go. China has made breakthroughs in some key technologies, but it still lacks a breakthrough in the overall core technology. Especially in terms of automatic control, precision machining and materials, there are few robots with Chinese intellectual property rights, and many key components have not been able to produce by themselves. Or the performance is not high, these factors have begun to seriously affect the pace of making domestic robots bigger and stronger.

It is understood that visual orientation has become the main cause of the current development of domestic robots. In most workshops or assembly lines, the most widely used robots are those that do not have “photoelectric eyes.” Because of this, these robots can only be fixed in one place to do simple and repetitive tasks.

For a long time, it is impossible to find a suitable method to deal with these complicated matters. The application of robots cannot always be expanded. However, this situation has finally changed. One of the most powerful technologies is the two-dimensional vision system.

Reference can be made to the robot developed by Japan's Fanuc CNC Systems. They use a vision system to assist the robot in picking up parts that are placed in bins separated into several layers by standard slide trays. This is a common method of transferring parts from one shop to another and even within the same shop. Without a vision system, manufacturers must use relatively expensive molded plastic dunnage or other methods to accurately pick up components inside the box. This type of molded plastic padding is relatively more expensive, of which light is 60,000 to 100,000 U.S. dollars for the design and manufacture of the mold.

Another benefit of using the vision system to the robot is to reduce the cost of the robot conveyor. Before using the vision system, many components must be positioned on a fixed pallet that is transported by the pallet conveyor. Even a simple pallet conveyor cost is not low, and the cost will increase as the conveyor transmission distance increases.

Now that the user's requirements for machine tool manufacturers are more than just providing machine tools, machine tool companies often have to provide users with a complete set of solutions or layouts for the entire production line. In Luo Baihui's view, the involvement of machine tool manufacturers in the production of industrial robots can be said to be a matter of course. In market development, it is only adding a new product variety in the mature market. In fact, robots are also very useful for the machine tool industry itself. For example, the traditional process of the machine tool industry—scraping—is the long-term dependence on skilled technicians to perform operations. This work is not only time-consuming but also physically demanding. If the visual problems of the robot are solved and applied universally, it may be more appropriate to serve this task. It seems that the development of robotics technology is not only the actual needs of machine tool users, but also has the function of back feeding for machine tool manufacturing.

At present, the total number of robots on the Chinese market is nearly 10,000 units, accounting for only 0.56% of the global total, of which the total domestic robot industry concentration is only 30%, and the rest are from Japan, the United States, Sweden, Germany, Italy, etc. 20 Introduced in multiple countries. The reason is that the self-owned brand is not enough, and the development of the self-owned brand and its automated equipment industry has become an urgent task.

The rapid development of Japan’s industrial robot industry has benefited from the government’s active support policy and strong financial support. The development of China's industrial robot industry is at a critical turning point. It also requires the government to increase support and further push forward. China's industrial robot industry will step onto a new stage and enter the stage of industrialization and scale development.