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.
See Also
Analyzing Targets
Analyzing and Updating Welds from Results
  1. From the ASO side tab, select the Line (Organizational Resource) as ASO.
  2. From the Analysis Commands section of the action bar, click Fastener Balancing .
    The Spot Balancing Scenario dialog box appears.

  3. 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.

  4. In the Robot Configs section, define all of the configurations of the robot to be considered during simulation.

  5. 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.

  6. 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.

  7. Select Check for collision to check for any collisions in addition to the reachability check. When not selected, only a reachability check is performed.
  8. Select Compute with Tool flipped to check the reachability status at each fastener location with the tool flipped.
  9. Set the Collision Tolerance value.
  10. Set the Computation step angle to define the angle step at which the weld gun should be rotated for computation.
  11. 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.

  12. 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

  13. Click OK.
    A new scenario is created in the Scenarios side tab.

  14. Click Simulate and Generate Results to simulate the scenario.

    Simulations are performed station by station.

    Once complete, results are generated in the Results side tab.

  15. Open the results and assign welds to robots using the commands available in the Analyze Results panel, as described in Analyzing and Updating Welds from Results.
  16. 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.

Fastener Balancing before assignment modifications

Fastener Balancing after assignment modifications