The tool manufacturer Siegfried Hofmann, based in Lichtenfels, specializes in the production of high-performance tools. The company was looking for a solution for the automatic polishing of injection molds. The particular challenge for the desired solution was to develop a system that could also be used economically for a quantity of 1. In addition, the employees were to be relieved of the manual and very time-consuming polishing work.

"With the flexible polishing system from Boll, we were able to further expand the level of innovation in our production," says Markus Gräf, Head of Process Development at Hofmann. Boll is a specialist in the field of human-robot collaboration and develops systems that enable automation even for small batch sizes and a wide range of variants. For tool manufacturer Hofmann, the engineers from Kleinwallstadt have developed a flexible polishing system in which the employee interacts directly with the robot.

The polishing system works in two steps: Step 1: Manual teaching of a robot path, step 2: Independent execution of the process by the robot. For quick and easy setup of the process sequences, the robot is picked up directly by the operator and the desired robot movements are simply demonstrated ("teaching by demonstration"). The operator does not need to have any programming knowledge for this. By simply teaching the robot path, the system can be adapted to new tasks within a very short time. These adjustments can be carried out by the user at any time. Time-consuming, costly and knowledge-intensive robot programming is completely eliminated.

"Our employees are delighted with the ease of use of the new system. New processes can be taught in within a few minutes. This function was particularly important for us, as we often have very small quantities of our injection molds, which previously made automation almost impossible," says Gräf.

Intelligent safety and material logistics concepts are used for the subsequent automation of the previously set up process. Adaptive process control is one of Boll's core competencies. The process is not only rigidly reproduced, but also monitored and controlled by sensors. This enables consistent results despite varying starting situations. For maximum flexibility, the robot is mounted on a mobile trolley and can therefore be moved as required. as