Press Tending

The robot picks a blank from an infeed destacker, places it in the die, retracts past the light curtain, and the press strokes. Once the ram clears, the arm returns for the formed part and moves it to an outfeed conveyor or into the next die in a transfer line.

Payload runs from 10 kg for small stamped panels up to 165 kg for heavy sheet, and reach in the 1800 to 3100 mm range clears deep dies without the arm contacting tooling. Press-class arms like the R-2000iC/165F and KUKA KR 500 Fortec handle the heavier end of that range.

Vacuum cross bars with quick-change tooling suit most sheet metal, while magnetic grippers work well on ferrous stock that resists vacuum sealing. On tandem lines, several robots hand parts between dies, so tool geometry and part flip logic have to be planned across the whole line.

Doubled blanks and dropped parts usually trace to destacker fanning, cup wear, or a magnet that has picked up two sheets at once. If the press is faulting on part-in-die at close, verify the retract-clear signal and confirm the light curtain reset sequence before touching the motion program.

Very high-speed transfer lines above roughly 15 strokes per minute usually run purpose-built transfer systems. For very small stamped parts or continuous coil-fed lines, in-die transfer often makes more sense than a robot per press.

A typical layout runs one robot at each end of a two- or three-station die line, with a destacker feeding blanks and a finished-part conveyor at the end. Timing is dictated by the press stroke, and the press tending interlocks sit at the center of the safety design.

Stamping presses store enough energy that the interlock story has to be airtight before the cell runs in production. Light curtain muting, positive door interlocks, and press control integration are cell-scope engineering, and getting them right at commissioning is much cheaper than fixing them later.