unternehmen & trends DIGITAL

The drums used by Bomag‘s mobile ma- chines to compact the subsoil for road con- struction weigh up to twelve tons and are aid- ed by vibration technology. In this demanding area of construction machinery technology, the company, headquartered in Boppard am Seam polishing robot for Bomag drum roller production Welding seams in perfection By Ralf Högel, Freelancer Bomag uses the latest technology in the production of rolling elements for single drum rollers. Many of the steps are carried out by robots – now including the cleaning and polishing of the weld seams. The result is a perfectly rounded weld seam that weighs tons. This creates the best conditions for smooth surfaces in road construction. 38  Unternehmen & Trends Images: © YASKAWA Rhein, is the world market leader and in 2013 commissioned a new plant for the drum pro- duction of single drum rollers. In the production process up to 60 mm thick sheet metal – some of which consists of ex- tremely wear-resistant Hardox steels – are first rounded, requiring bending forces of up to 6,000 tons. Then comes the fully au- tomated welding of the longitudinal seam as well as the dished plates, i.e. the side parts of the single drum rollers. Then the longitu- dinal seam on the single drum roller must be cleaned up and polished with high precision. Any out-of-roundness, however slight, would impair the quality of the planum, which is the technical term for the substructure of the asphalt layer. Wanted: Alternative to longitudinal seam milling Originally a longitudinal seam milling ma- chine undertook this task. It milled off the protrusions of the weld seam in a linear movement, causing both noise and a great deal of dust. In addition the accuracy of the process did not meet Bomag‘s requirements. That is why the people in charge at Bomag were looking for an alternative to milling and also looked into robotics. This is be- cause many processes in drum production – including material transport by heavy-duty AGVs – are already automated. The contact to the company that finally de- veloped and implemented the solution came about more by chance: Harald Aßmann, team leader at the drum factory, accepted the invi- tation to a Yaskawa in-house exhibition and informed himself about the possibilities of robot-supported grinding. The information he received convinced him: ”We got to know how grinding robots were used in existing projects. This showed us, that Yaskawa is the right partner for us.“ First step: Measuring the weld seam After intensive project work, Yaskawa in- stalled a completely enclosed system in the Bomag is the world market leader for single drum rollers and other machines for soil compaction. Image: © BOMAG The cleaning robot was completely enclosed to prevent noise and dust generation. S H A R E