VI. Make a short report on the use of automated assembly in industry.

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 351.

Text 15B

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From the history of the assembly line

Though prototypes of the assembly line can be traced to antiquity, the true ancestor of this industrial technique was the 19th-century meat-packing industry in Cincinnati, Ohio, and in Chicago, where overhead trolleys were employed to convey carcasses from worker to worker. When these trolleys were connected with chains and power was used to move the carcasses past the workers at a steady pace, they formed a true assembly line (or in effect a "disassembly" line in the case of meat cutters). Stationary workers concentrated on one task, performing it at a pace dictated by the machine, minimizing unnecessary movement, and dramatically increasing productivity.

Text 15C

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Assembly and Inspection

An effective application area of industrial robots is assembly and inspection.

The use of robots in assembly is expected to increase because of the high cost of manual labour. But the design of the product is an important aspect of robotic assembly. Assembly methods that are satisfactory for humans are not always suitable for robots. Screws and nuts are widely used for fastening in manual assembly, but the same operations are extremely difficult for a one-armed robot.

Inspection is another area of factory operations in which the utilization of robots is growing. In a typical inspection job, the robot positions a sensor with respect to the work part and determines whether the part answers the quality specifications. In nearly all industrial robotic applications, the robot provides a substitute for human labour. There are certain characteristics of industrial jobs performed by humans that can be done by robots:

1. the operation is repetitive, involving the same basic work motions every cycle;

2. the operation is hazardous or uncomfortable for the human worker (for example: spray painting, spot welding, arc welding, and certain machine loading and unloading tasks);

3. the workpiece and the tool are too heavy and difficult to handle;

4. the operation allows the robot to be used on two or three shifts.