THE CHALLENGE
In 2016 we were contacted by one of the most important foundries in the world to participate in the creation of a new automatic core gluing cell and insertion of a metal filter on the head core. Also in this case the spaces available to create the system were very limited and the products to be produced were of 3 different types: n° 2 RH-LH products on which to extract the products from the Existing core shooter machines, deburring, l insertion and fixing of the metal filter, gluing of the cores that make up the upper package and finally palletizing on core trolleys. For the 3rd type of product the request was: extraction from the core shooting machines, deposit of the core package on the shuttle conveyor where it will be manually unloaded by the operator.

THE SOLUTION
With our philosophy we managed to find a very interesting configuration in which we used 3 ABB robots, with the aid of the grippers mounted on board the core removal operations from the core shooter, deburring, removal of the metal filter from a warehouse with automatic advancement, glue distribution and composition of the core package. In the cell there are 2 shuttle conveyors which carry out the task of moving the cores towards the operator, to allow a visual inspection and repositioning of the individual cores. After the gluing and filter fixing phase, this head core pack is palletized on core trolleys with 5 decomposable levels which are advanced once full by a roller conveyor towards the operator, this solution was adopted to increase the cell autonomy and not having an operator dedicated to the finished product.

THE RESULTS
Once the Lay-out was defined with the Customer, the entire cell was made to measure with an innovative process of insertion and fixing of the metal filter using Stapling Heads and thanks to the optimization of the spaces it will be possible to install other identical cells on the Shoot souls installed near this cell.

CUSTOMER COMMENT
Satisfied with the result obtained, the Customer is considering replicating the automation on 3 other existing core shooters, currently still with manual unloading.