Robotic Investment Casting System – Urschel Laboratories, Inc.

Investment casting: http://robot.fanucamerica.com/Product...

Urschel Laboratories is the global leader in the design and manufacture of precision high-speed size reduction machinery. With over 50 models offered, all machines are made to exacting standards at Urschel’s advanced manufacturing facility in Chesterton, Indiana.

Urschel developed this robotic system to utilize FANUC’s R-2000iC/165F robot to perform an investment casting process. This process typically takes five days to build the wax shell for most molds, running through the process once each day then drying overnight. Part Programs for the system are created on an easy-to-use PC application, and are easily modified with standard PC methods such as copy & paste and drop & drag of process steps. Part Program sections or steps are easily copied from one Part Program to another to aid in creating Part Programs, thus reducing Program creation time. One robot TP program runs all of the parts. Part Programs are a parametric based for hundreds of different part types, allowing operators to change the part type, approach height, angle, rotational speed, and other parameters with just a few key strokes.

In day 1 of the casting process, the FANUC R-2000iC robot loads the wax hanger, then moves it to the first slurry tank. The robot dips the hanger into the tank at 45 degrees in order to ensure complete part coverage. On the first day, the thinnest slurry and the finest ceramic sand are used. Once the robot has removed the mold and rotated it so that slurry completely covers all cavities, it moves the mold to a rain fall station where it again rotates the mold at an angle. Once the rain fall process is complete, the robot removes it, hangs it to dry, and the day 1 process is finished.

Day 2 of the process, again, starts with the FANUC R-2000iC robot loading the wax hanger. In each day’s run - except the first day - the robot goes thru a “Dust Off” procedure where the mold is rotated at a higher RPM to release any loose ceramic dust. This procedure is a good demonstration of a Continuous Turn Axis. The robot then dips the part into a pre-wet tank before dipping it into a slurry tank, again, at a 45-degree angle. Since wax parts should not stop rotating while wet with slurry (with some exceptions) a 7th axis was installed on the robot’s end of arm tooling. The system is equipped with FANUC Dual Check Safety positional check with DCS I/O. These safety features from FANUC, along with built-in safety scanners, reduce downtime due to better access to the Slurry Tanks. If the Operator occupies a Slurry Tank zone, the DCS-equipped robot will stop and wait for the operator to clear the area before continuing with its cycle. Once the mold is finished in the slurry, it again moves to the rain fall station, then back to it’s hanger station upon completion.

In day 3 of the process, the robot loads the hanger and again moves to the slurry station to dip the mold at a 45-degree angle. This intuitive, easy to operate system from Urschel, along with FANUC robots, have greatly enhanced the investment casting process for Urschel by reducing maintenance downtime and system idle time due to better access to the slurry tanks and reduced part program development and modification time. Finally, the robot dips the mold into a fluidizer bed.

To learn more about Urschel and their innovative products and technologies, please visit http://www.urschel.com. Contact FANUC America today to discover more possibilities of increased productivity and profitability through robotic automation. To learn more, please visit http://www.fanucamerica.com.