What are Common Challenges in Robotic Machine Tending?

Automating machine tending with robots in your factory provides a wide range of benefits from longer unattended runs and greater capacity to increased profit per part.

However, robotic automation presents certain challenges that are not always obvious. 

These include interfacing between the robots and CNCs and other machines, managing multi-machine operations, and part presentation for robots as opposed to humans to enable autonomous “lights-out” production. 

I’ll cover a few of the most common here today and you can learn more about these and others in our Complete Guide to Robotic Machine Tending Projects white paper.

Part Presentation In-Feed / Out-Feed

An often overlooked consideration in robot machine tending is that robots require consistent part presentation. Robots need parts consistently positioned for in-feed and out-feed operations. 

If parts are randomly aligned or jumbled, the robot may pick and load them incorrectly. This makes it important to organize part staging for robotic requirements.

Robot-to-Machine Interface

Another challenge in robotic machine tending is overcoming connection and communication incompatibilities between robots and machines and other equipment. Machine PLCs and protocols are not inherently compatible. 

The lack of standards often presents unanticipated issues and can be endlessly frustrating. Custom integrations offer limited functionality, are overly complex to install and difficult to maintain over time. Standard off-the-shelf interfacing solutions for interoperability such as Flexxbotics represent the best option in many cases.

Multiple Machine Robot Operation

When deploying robots across multiple factory machines and equipment assets, referred to as advanced robotic machine tending, process workflow considerations become critically important. 

Any combination of multi-machine, multi-part, multi-step operational requirements means the robots have to operate in a coordinated manner in the overall process. 

Managing the timing and coordination of tasks is crucial to assure consistent operation and avoid bottlenecks and unexpected stoppages. The robot must be able to transition between different machines and tasks without mistakes or unplanned downtime.

In addition, different machines and machine types often have different controllers with different protocols as noted previously which can complicate set-up and ongoing operation further. Standardized interfacing solutions like Flexxbotics become essential in these advanced configurations.

Achieving “Lights Out” Automation

“Lights out” operation where production runs continuously without human intervention requires more than just robots. 

Production process orchestration becomes essential including not just loading and unloading, but tool wear detection, defect identification, sorting, corrective action, and more. 

All must be fully automated and synchronized. This requires sophisticated interoperable coordination between the robots, factory machines, and other equipment, as well as, robotic production software that manages the parts, jobs, changeovers, workflows, and processes for unattended operation. 

Standard digital solutions such as Flexxbotics are intended for these types of complex smart factory robotic operation at scale.

If your company is undertaking new automation projects now or planning them for later in the year, you may want to take a look at our CNC Robot Machine Tending Essentials blog or get in touch with us here at Flexxbotics.