SUPER-SIZED PRODUCTION: ROBOT HANDLES PARTS IN EXCESS OF 10 M IN LENGTH

EU Funded Prototype Robot Could be the Future of Large Format Manufacturing

The European Commission’s Factories of the Future program (FoF) marked an important milestone on Tuesday October 20 2015 when the MEGAROB prototype was presented to the public for the first time in Zaragoza, Spain. The MEGAROB project is an international project overseen by Spanish research institute AITIIP Technology Centre with the support of the CSEM (Swiss Centre for Electronics and Microtechnology) and industry partners such as Hexagon Metrology. The ultimate aim of the project is to bring the accuracy of small-part production to the world of large format operating operations, and hopefully give European manufacturing an edge over its competitors.

The US$4,870,000 (€4,300,000) project has taken three years to produce a working prototype that features a spherical robot suspended from a rectangular crane rig to create a large, flexible automated platform. The multifunctional manufacturing robot is capable of highly accurate work on parts measuring more than 10 meters in length. The overhead crane rig allows it to work quickly and efficiently without intruding on the workshop floor below. Hexagon Metrology provided its expertise in robotic guidance, which inspired the researchers to integrate the Leica Absolute Tracker portable coordinate measuring machine into the design (Hexagon share the same parent company as Leica).

“MEGAROB is a project which embraces our vision of connected sensing, thinking and acting to integrate metrology directly into operations and improve manufacturing,” said Duncan Redgewell, Vice President Hexagon Metrology – Laser Tracker and Portable Measuring Arms. He added, “Installation of the prototype began at AITIIP’s Zaragoza site early in 2015 and it can already complete functions including milling, drilling, deburring, grinding, polishing, riveting, screwing, welding, coating and painting. The long-term development goal of the project is to reduce the need for investment in specialist machinery for all these tasks, and with the positioning accuracy provided by the Leica Absolute Tracker we hope to help AITIIP and CSEM achieve this.”