What are the requirements for planning an automated sheet metal bending line?

What are the requirements for planning an automated sheet metal bending line?

With the continuous development of the sheet metal industry, the required bending workpieces are becoming more and more complex and large in number, which puts forward new demands on the bending machine technology, i.e., better bending process and higher bending efficiency, in order to cope with the evolving needs of the industry, while the more complex the workpieces are, the more types of tooling are required, and how to manage the numerous tooling is particularly important. Therefore, the study of automatic die change technology and trajectory algorithm of bending machine is of great significance.

At present, the mainstream automatic bending solution on the market is through the combination of robot and bending machine or the combination of manual quick clamps and tooling. This combination is suitable for high-volume production with less frequent die change, and the robot clamps the sheet metal parts for processing after the die clamping is completed. However, when the product is small batch and multiple batches, the tooling is changed frequently and the manual tooling change is time consuming and labor intensive, which cannot meet the demand of high efficiency and high quality.

Sheet metal bending automation, digitalization, informatization and future technologies needed for intelligent manufacturing.

(1) Automation and digitization of sheet metal processing equipment and production lines;

(2) Automation of post-processing process of sheet metal processing;

(3) Small batch (discrete manufacturing) management technology, promotion and application of ERP and MES systems in sheet metal manufacturing plants;

(4) Digital technology of material development, process design, tooling design, equipment digitization, remote online monitoring and fault diagnosis;

(5) Virtualization technology for visualization of factory, workshop, production line, production equipment, mold manufacturing, etc;

(6) Development and practice of application fields of big data application, cloud computing and Internet of Things technology in sheet metal industry;

(7) Unmanned workshop planning, construction and control technology.

Lean Production and Management

(1) Focus on the design of sheet metal products, especially the design of structural parts, cultivate the product and quality consciousness of “quality” and “beauty” in the design, and introduce the concept of “creativity”;

(2) The process time is fixed, and the transfer time between processes is reduced, and lean production is applied in sheet metal manufacturing;

(3) Development toward finished product realization.

Sheet metal processing enterprises must make changes in their ideology, operate their enterprises with the concept of creating, building and managing modern enterprises, follow the growth of excellent users, respect trusted competitors, put the construction of enterprise culture in an important position, and make strengthening quality awareness and improving the quality of life of staff members a habit of the enterprise. In terms of sheet metal processing equipment enterprises, they must make equipment that meets the needs of the enterprise, reliability and usability are crucial, but while providing equipment and technology, they should also pay attention to the humanities of the enterprise, that is, the corporate culture, and assist users in developing habits of use that meet the characteristics of their equipment, so that their equipment can better serve the users.