Until now, it was hard work for the employees: after cutting, they had to remove the heavy panel components by hand and place them vertically on trolleys. Now this is done by an ABB robot, which stacks the cut panel materials in the correct order on a pallet. This new solution increases the company's efficiency, enhances process reliability and also reduces the workload for employees. The sorting cell installed at Fingerhaus is equipped with an ABB IRB 6650S with a special vacuum load pick-up, which was developed in cooperation with the companies IMA Klessmann and Schmalz. The IRB 6650S is a shelf-mounted robot with a large working range and high load capacity. It can perform complete vertical and horizontal lifting movements and reach far forwards and downwards. The special gripper enables the robot to simultaneously operate shelves and create stacks that maintain both stability and the desired sequence.

The automation solution combines panel cutting with order picking. The robot's task is to first remove the panels from the processing center, which have been cut but not yet sorted due to waste optimization, and temporarily store them in a shelving system. It then sorts all the panels required for a customer order onto a pallet. As the panels are sometimes very large, Fingerhaus benefits from the reach of the ABB robot.

This is where ABB's Robotstudio software shows its advantages: Users of the simulation and offline programming software can carry out robot programming from a PC without having to intervene in ongoing production. Decisive for the solution at Fingerhaus are the open concept of the system control and the integration with the robot programming. Thanks to the intelligent job handling, a wide variety of tasks can be processed algorithmically, allowing the robot to be used flexibly. To this end, IMA Klessmann programmed an intelligent interface from the IPC.NET production control system to the ABB robot, in which five different programming levels are interlinked. The universal and open interface enables dynamic data transfer and ensures flexibility - also for the future. In the case of material modifications, for example, Fingerhaus can quickly and easily make any adjustments itself via the IPC.NET system control and thus adapt the robot intelligently - without a great deal of programming effort or in-depth programming knowledge.

At Fingerhaus, the robot solution increases process reliability in panel picking and frees employees from heavy physical labor. This increases both the company's profitability and the health of its employees. The automated and optimal provision of the panel material in the correct sequence saves work steps. pb