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MOTOMAN ROBOTICS (UK) LTD |
Press Release
SINGLE-LIFT ROBOT CELLS DELIVERED AND INSTALLED THE SAME DAY FOR WELDING HONDA CAR PARTS
Cowley-based UYS Ltd, a first-tier subcontractor owned jointly by Yutaka Giken and Honda of the UK Manufacturing, has supplied the latter with welded sub-assemblies for the Accord and Civic since 1998. When in 2000 the subcontractor was looking to support the manufacture of the Honda CRV, which went into mass production in November 2001, it chose Motoman to supply the robot welding cells owing in part to the speed with which they could be installed.
Said
Mike Logue, engineering and sales manager at UYS, “Once the decision had been
made that we would support CRV production, speed was of the essence to get the
welding cells in and producing parts. We needed to meet an initial supply date
of August 2001 and ramp up to mass production from the October. We placed the
order in April that year and were quoted by Motoman a 12-week lead-time for the
delivery of 11 cells, later to be increased to 13.
“So all the robotic arc welding equipment for the CRV was able to be installed during our summer shutdown. Some cells were in and running before that, as I and some of my colleagues were using them to fine tune the production of a few difficult welded assemblies during the holiday.”
Key to the ability of Motoman to supply its ArcSystem cells so quickly is the single-lift design. The pallet-mounted unit is loaded onto a lorry as a complete system, with guarding and full CE marking. When each cell arrived, it could be off-loaded quickly and the services connected. As Motoman had already written most of the programs as part of the contract, the cells were ready for start-up the same day.
Mr Logue commented that other robot suppliers including the incumbent, which also quoted for the new contract, offered to deliver their equipment and build the guarding on site, which would have taken two weeks per cell. Moreover, the lead-time for delivery was two months longer than Motoman’s, whose price turned out to be between five and 10 per cent less than the competition. Overall, the project took five months from inception to completion, twice as fast as the original start-up for the Accord in 1998/99.
The first-tier assemblies supplied by UYS to Honda for the CRV are predominantly exhausts, but include suspension components and stiffening rods, splash guards and side-impact bars. It was the addition of other welded assembles such as the steering hanger, and a late design change to a suspension arm, that resulted in the original Motoman order being nearly doubled to 25 welding cells. Two further cells were delivered at the end of May 2003 for producing suspension arms from galvanised steel for the 2004 Civic model.
The number of car sets produced by the Motoman equipment totals 550 per day over two shifts. Most cells are single-robot, twin-station and all include the latest Motoman UP-Series, 6-axis articulated-arm robot which has all services routed inside the frame, avoiding trailing cables and hoses. A few single-station cells are reserved for MIG welding more complex parts such as the exhaust manifold, as production cycle time is long compared with the fixturing time. Only one Motoman cell performs spot welding.
Equipment up-time is paramount in a mass production environment such as this. Concluded Mr Logue, “Motoman robots are inherently reliable and are designed so that our operators can easily recover most day-to-day faults, which means that prolonged downtime is rare. We have had good support from Motoman’s Banbury centre and from their head office in Sweden.”
For More Information Contact:
Motoman Robotics (UK) Ltd
Johnson Park, Wildmere Road, Banbury, Oxon OX16 3JU
Tel: 01295 272755
FAX: 01295 267127
E-mail:
information@motoman.co.uk