No Manual touch up with DynaCal at Ford

As a pilot project in preparation for the B-Car project, the full service suppliers Kuka, Valiant/Steelweld, and ComauPICO committed to design and fully (including calibration) offline program (OLP) nearly 100 robots for the CD132 vehicle at Genk.  Several tests, especially involving the DynaCal calibration tool, have been conducted by group staff and the Genk plant maintenance department, but CD132 is the first production program to utilize the OLP technology to achieve a “no manual touch up” level of accuracy.  With the help of plant maintenance staff, and Dynalog, the work was completed for all robots within two days, and accuracy checks (visual against a prototype panel) looked good.  To quantify the accuracy, a test program was created and downloaded to one robot, and the measured accuracy was less than 1mm, which achieved the desired goal.  Better accuracy could be achieved through better design and repeatability of the End of Arm Tool.  Additional maintenance related benefits were identified by the Genk plant staff, resulting in a project to calibrate all the V184 body shop robots as well.

The Dynalog calibration system delivered the required accuracy for generating production programs offline without the need for sheet metal or position “touch-up”.  Further verification of the accuracy is planned for these cells by measuring the resulting spots on a CMM and comparing that to the CAD data targets.  While the fastest measurement time achieved for these six robots was 45 minutes, the goal of 30 minutes or less still seems regularly achievable based on other projects.