Automation and robotics serving the trimming and deburring of shoe soles

Increased quality of the finished product and higher productivity. This is the summary of the goals achieved by Autec Automation in the development of a sole processing plant intended for the footwear industry. Also decisive in achieving the expected results was the performance and reliability provided by the process-integrated Yaskawa robot.

Headquartered in Ponsacco (PI) and founded in 1993, Autec Automation specializes in the design and implementation of industrial automation where improvements in production processes and a reduction in the time required to execute the process are required. It also specializes in the design, implementation of Cartesian robots and the integration of anthropomorphic robots, conveying systems, extracting, deburring and trimming parts, applying adhesives and spraying, following profiles derived off-line. Know-how and expertise made available by a team of specialists active in various engineering disciplines, able to provide high value-added automation solutions customized almost entirely for the foreign market. These include some sole trimming and deburring solutions developed for the footwear industry, in which Yaskawa robots were used.

From process requirements and criticality...

The application of trimming and deburring soles," explains the owner, Eng. Fabrizio Geri, "is both a novelty and a "mature" solution. We had produced a sole trimming plant in puliurethane about 15 years ago. In the past two years we have developed an even more advanced application that builds on our experience in the industry.

The production process of puliurethane soles, despite having applied in recent years, new technologies in some stages of the process, still involves many manual steps that slow down and fragment production as well as increase costs and reduce the quality of the finished product.

Going to analyze the various stages of the production cycle - adds Eng. Geri - it is possible to better realize the presence of manual processing in strategic points of the process that, properly automated and directly connected with the upstream and downstream stages, lead to greater linearity of production. In particular, it is the trimming/deburring operation that requires a lot of manual work, noting the poor management control at this stage.

So what, if any, problems and critical issues were encountered in the application development phase? How were they addressed and solved?

First of all," notes Eng. Geri, "it was not so immediate to be able to feed the system fully automatically, since the soles arrive at the plant all mixed in bulk in large containers. The goal was to set up a high-performance system that would be able to separate them one by one and then convey them in an oriented way to the robot work area.

Criticality, this one, solved thanks to the use of vision systems that are easily integrated with the Yaskawa control.

Secondly," continues Eng. Geri, "puliurethane soles, by the very nature of the material, cannot be handled and managed as rigid mechanical parts with precise and repeatable measurements. Their dimensions vary depending on material formulation, temperature, humidity, and so on. Therefore, it was necessary to implement online adaptive techniques made possible again by Yaskawa control.