Picking and Placing Crankshafts

Customer demand

The crankshaft is a central component of the internal combustion engine. Crankshafts vary in shape and size - in addition, crankshafts are heavy and weigh between several dozen and hundreds of kilograms. Traditional, manual machine loading of crankshafts is not very efficient and, from an ergonomic point of view, a great strain on the employees working here. Therefore, the customer wanted to automate the machine loading of crankshafts. However, crankshafts are heavy, have a complex structure and reflective surfaces. Conventional automation solutions have not been reliable enough to meet the customer's requirements.

Challenges

• Complex structures
• Reflective surfaces
• Different variants of crankshafts

The Mech-Mind solution

Mech-Mind's 3D camera identifies and locates the chaotically stored crankshafts in a bin. Subsequently, the 3D vision-guided robot picks up the crankshafts and positions them for the downstream process.

• The Mech-Mind 3D vision system can quickly adapt to different types of crankshafts.
• Intelligent algorithms calculate the optimal gripping angle and trajectory for robots, ensuring collision-free operation.
• Mech-Mind's Mech-Eye LSR L industrial 3D camera offers high accuracy, a large field of view covering the entire working area, and can generate high-quality 3D point clouds of overlapping crankshafts.
• Mech-Mind's Mech-Eye LSR L 3D camera offers solid performance even under demanding lighting conditions (>30,000 lux).

Results

The customer's production has now implemented fully automated machine loading of the crankshafts. In addition, production output has been increased, labor costs reduced, and the ergonomic burden on employees significantly lowered.