Meissner relies more on robots

Automation with a startup attitude

To drive innovation in automation, Meissner relies on a young team led by Maximilian Kombächer, 32, who built up the unit and now acts as Team Leader, Automation Technology.

“We stepped up to this project with the idea that our automation solutions should help expand our product portfolio. That meant going beyond our traditional semi-automation approaches. We now have special, customized machines and fixtures, but also a series of entirely new initiatives – right now, for example, we’re looking at logistics aspects that our clients have to address when using our tools”, says Kombächer.

Engraving aluminum molds – but how?

The freedom to think like a startup was also the recipe for success in the project for fully automated engraving or embossing of aluminum molds – the patent’s already been issued!

The molds are used to make truck floor coverings from plastic. The finished product has to be skid-proof and high-quality in appearance. To achieve this effect, an embossing process is applied over the entire surface. The aim is to create an evenly applied irregular surface structure that appears as random as possible.

Creating such a mold tool manually can easily take two or three months because to ensure a uniform pattern, each mold should only be stamped by a single metalworking specialist. And it’s a job that no employee can do for more than three or four hours a day.

No one dares to do it? Yes, the FASTSUITE team does!

In early 2020, Meissner decided to bring outside support on board to address its NC programming tasks, presenting the challenge to several providers of offline programming software.

“We didn’t get that many responses – there weren’t many who were confident they could do it”, says Duchhardt. “With the FASTSUITE team, things were different right from the start – they were all fired up from the get go. Their commitment never flagged after that, and this has been the nature of our partnership with CENIT until today.”

The 3D simulation platform FASTSUITE Edition 2 provides a unique concept for offline programming.

• FASTSUITE’s technology and control modules ensure that robot program generation quickly yields high-quality manufacturing results because the specifics of the respective production technology and robot control system are already part and parcel of the program generation methodology.
• The robot or machine control programs are generated on a process geometry basis. Process geometry can come in the form of points (e.g. for point welding), curves (e.g. for laser cutting or roll hemming) or surfaces (e.g. for paint application or polishing).

CENIT software service team implements programming methodology and uploader

Because embossing is a fairly uncommon production technology in industry, a specific FASTSUITE technology package was not yet available for the purpose. However, the CENIT software service team was able to adapt an existing technology package (stud welding) to meet Meissner’s requirements. A suitable programming methodology was developed in close coordination with the client.

It was also the CENIT software service team that developed the necessary downloader (postprocessor). The process points are transferred as a data set to FASTSUITE Edition 2 and programmed area by area. The pilot project covered the 160,000 process points mentioned above, but the solution can handle a great many more

Thanks to the highly realistic FASTSUITE E2 simulation, Meissner can prevent collisions or problems caused by singularities before the robot actually begins embossing the mold. The only limiting factor during production is the robot control system which can currently consume not more than 6,000 operations at one time.