Paint Robot

Present System -

Our client wanted to replace an existing yet aging paint robot due to maintenance issues. The existing robotic system consisted of an indirectly integrated vision system positioned outside the paint booth that took an image of the object to be painted; rectangular fixed width cans having variable depths and varying heights ranging from 6.5” to 40.0” in 1/4” increments. The vision system would view the can and indicate the size as 1 of 16 finite size ranges to the existing robot. The robot would in turn run the paint routine for the indicated can size.

While the present system could spray cover the entire surface of these cans, it was not efficient as there was excessive over spray on smaller sized cans of each range.

Because the can was then indexed into the paint booth via an imprecise chain conveyor, the exact location of the object was not known once painting started, therefore the robot program had to start the spray sooner and end later resulting in considerable overspray to ensure full coverage. The solution called for the vision camera to be located within the spray booth.

Replacement System -

Mesco proposed as a replacement robotic system that had an integral vision system capability allowing for a more accurately defined paint requirement pattern.

The vision camera was mounted inside the paint booth and a program was implemented that would identify the exact location and size of the can that was ready for painting. The result was reduced over spray thereby requiring reduced primer and paint materials.

Spray materials costs reduction was required in order to earn capitalization of this project.

Programming -

We were able to utilize the Edge Pair Tool to get the tank height and center point of the tank. Since the coordinates are easily read from the Vision Registers the task of calculating the offsets for the top and bottom of the tank was simple. Once these two offsets were calculated, the move commands with offset could be utilized to perform the required paint pattern. Utilizing these calculated offsets, only one paint pattern needed to be stored.