Automated Loading and Unloading of a CNC Milling Machine

Automatic Loading and Unloading of a CNC Milling Machine

With a customized solution from our partner company SPIE ESCAD Austria, our customer was able to maintain their production despite staff shortages and increase machine utilization by 30%.

Challenge and Objective

The customer’s original problem was that due to staff shortages, production could not be guaranteed to run smoothly. The objective was to find an automated solution to keep production running. It was crucial to prevent delivery delays for orders in the long term.

Solution

SPIE ESCAD Austria was brought in as a solution provider to develop and implement an automated loading and unloading solution for the CNC milling machine. The process began with a visit to the customer, during which the on-site conditions were analyzed. A simplified program was developed with a demo Universal Robots robot to demonstrate the robot’s easy programmability to the customer. The customer was enthusiastic from the start and subsequently received an offer for a robot, a gripper, programming, and machine integration.

The order arrived the very next day, and four weeks later, a SPIE ESCAD Austria robot programmer already had an appointment with the customer.

The loop process “Loading/Unloading a CNC Milling Machine” included these steps:

Robot opens the machine door
Robot picks up the component from a magazine and places it into the machine
Robot starts the machine
Machine signals the end of its process
Robot opens the machine door and removes the finished component

The commissioning was completed after two working days.

Benefits

After project implementation, the customer can now continuously load and unload the CNC milling machine and was thus able to mitigate the impact of staff shortages. Production can now be run efficiently and without delivery delays. In addition, machine utilization could be increased by 30%, as the robot now also enables a third shift. An offer for another robot has already been requested and submitted by SPIE ESCAD Austria.

These strengths of our partner company SPIE ESCAD Austria were utilized

Many years of experience in robotics and automation
Dynamic and fast team that works close to the market
Creation of individual and tailor-made solutions for large and small customers
Complete Development Service from a Single Source
Simple company structure for uncomplicated project execution

About our customer
Our customer is a medium-sized company from Southern Germany specializing in the manufacturing and processing of metal and plastic components. They produce precision mechanical individual and series parts, electronics, components for fittings, and testing and measurement technology.

Industry
Metal and Plastic Production

You are currently viewing a placeholder content from YouTube. To access the actual content, click the button below. Please note that doing so will share data with third-party providers.

More Information

Unblock content Accept required service and unblock content

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are particularly affected by staff shortages. Nevertheless, many customers are initially skeptical about automation. However, many monotonous tasks can be partially or even entirely automated.

René Auringer
Sales and Project Manager
SPIE ESCAD Austria GmbH

Do you already have a project in mind?

We’re happy to assist you with planning and implementation.