Balancing Fasteners Across the Resources of a Line
You can assign and balance the fasteners between all stations/robots under a line automatically.
Fastener Balancing creates a fastener/spot balancing scenario with all
robots and welds available in an organizational resource (line). It then helps you balance the
fasteners by verifying their accessibility by different robots, and allowing their assignment
to a given robot of a station.
It considers the existing product flows between stations, and of the assignment of the different
parts and assemblies. This serves to propose verification only on those stations where the
parts linked by each fastener are present together, as well as on downstream stations.
Before you begin: You have:
Parts and assemblies already balanced on stations.
Fastening operations available for all fasteners considered for balancing.
Implement link between the station and general operation.
Implement link between the robot and its associated general operation.
From the ASOside tab, select the Line (Organizational Resource) as ASO.
From the Analysis Commands section of the action bar, click Fastener Balancing .
The Spot Balancing Scenario dialog box appears.
In the Tool Profiles section, the current tool mounted on the
robot is displayed. Double-click the cell in the Home Positions to
specify the Home positions to be considered during simulation.
From the Home Positions section, you can check the robot and gun
accessibility for the specified fasteners with the Open and
Close home positions. Select one or both of the available home
positions in the list. You can select multiple positions by holding the
Ctrl key as you make the selections.
In the Robot Configs section, define all of the configurations
of the robot to be considered during simulation.
In the Fasteners/Spot Targets section, the list of welds to be
considered for the current robot is populated based on product flow and build-up. You can
add welds/fasteners by selecting them in the work area or
tree.
Number of Targets displays the number of fasteners currently
in the list.
You can select specific fasteners in the list and click
Remove to remove them from the list.
Remove All removes all fasteners from the list.
When selected, Remove all fasteners already assigned to any
Robot removes such fasteners from the analysis.
In the Parameters frame, select Compute from Start
angle and End angle to force the computation from the specified
Start Angle to End Angle even if a
feasible solution is found. When not selected, the computation for a fastener/weld stops
as soon as a feasible solution is found.
Select Check for collision to check for any collisions in
addition to the reachability check. When not selected, only a reachability check is
performed.
Select Compute with Tool flipped to check the reachability
status at each fastener location with the tool flipped.
Set the Collision Tolerance value.
Set the Computation step angle to define the angle step at
which the weld gun should be rotated for computation.
Collision objects indicates the number of objects that are checked
for collision. To edit/view the collision list, select Edit the list of
collision objects
.
The Manage Collision Objects dialog box appears.
In the Robot parts used for collision frame:
By default, the Selected Parts list contains all the parts
of the robot except its base, and Available Objects list
contains only the robot base.
Objects in each of the lists are displayed in the respective viewer below each
list.
You can move any object between Available Parts and
Selected Parts lists using the arrow buttons and , or by double
clicking the object to move in the viewer.
Selected objects are cross-highlighted between entries in the list, the viewer
below the list, and in the work area.
In the Collision objects frame:
By default, Include all Objects
is enabled. This means the Collision Parts list includes all
of the objects except for those objects in the Robot parts used for
Collision list.
You can remove any part from the list if that part should not be considered for
collision analysis by selecting the object followed by Remove
object
.
You can empty the Collision objects list by deselecting
Include all objects
.
Click OK to accept any changes made and close the
Manage Collision Objects dialog box. Collision
objects in the Spot Analysis Scenario dialog is
updated with the proper number of objects.
For Servo weld guns, you can expand Weld Gun Additional
Parameters to reveal options for Gun Open Clearance
and Gun Tip Abrasion.
Default values for Weld Gun Additional Parameters can be defined
in Me > Preferences > Simulation > Process Engineering > Tool Analysis
Click OK.
A new scenario is created in the Scenariosside tab.
Click Simulate and Generate Results
to simulate the scenario.
Simulations are performed station by station.
Once complete, results are generated in the Resultsside tab.
Click Auto Assign
to help balance
the fasteners automatically by assigning welds that are assignable to only a single
resource first. The remaining welds are distributed between assignable resources, taking
the load on that resource into consideration.