Hello, here. We are in the products and Technology showcase. We've made our way all
the way back to the back. End of the show floor.
Just a reminder, the way this story goes is we start up with the industries. We give you
ideas of use cases that you can use this automation technology. And and then as we
work our way back to the products, we show you what makes this happen.
So here, I am with Curtis Beaumont Curtis and I are in front of the flexible manufacturing
demo Curtis. Can you tell us? Well, first of all, tell us the story about
the timeline on this. Well, because it makes me like a little sweaty and it's a good one.
Well, we've all worked with marketing folks, right? And they get an idea in their head and
I'm watching Focus. Well, sorry,
we've all worked with them to get an idea in their head and they think
that it can just magically appear the
idea for this machine actually came about about mid-may.
And so we had a very tight timeline. Our goal is to get it to the show and also get it to
pack Expo beforehand. And so if anyone's ever built a machine like
this, they know that it takes a little bit longer than that to do that.
But what we started with was a digital Twin of this machine. So we had we contracted
with the robotics manufacturer that could actually build this in SolidWorks.
And then we took the SolidWorks, trying, put it into emulate 3D and that actually allowed
us to bring it and
bring it alive, right? We were able to test our controls code and then when the
machine was finally built and we have power to it, we had two weeks before we got into
this shape, so we could actually ship into the show
and here we are. So it's quite an amazing story. It is a
really cool story, and I think it's just a really cool use case for
I'm really 3D which we saw earlier up in the Innovations Booth, but
it's really working and it's really helpful because we would have never made that
timeline without being able to test things. Digitally first, make some mistakes, you
know, if up in the cloud and then come back here and not have to make them in real life.
Absolutely. So tell me a little bit about the robotics
that's going on in here. And what's what can we do for our customers to help?
Make working with robotics easier? Yeah, the real key to this demo is actually the fact
that we have two different types of robots. We have an
auto knocks Delta robot here and then We have a come Aus Kira, for robot
over here. And then we have an eye track. And the benefit of this whole machine is
right down here. It's the fact that we don't have a robot
controller in here. We have a PLC for a PA, see, as we like to call it. Right? That's
controlling all of this. So we have kinetics 5700,
power structures that are running. Our native vpl Motors.
And then we also are controlling the Kemal Motors in their their robot and it's all
being controlled and coordinated through the compactlogix PLC nice and historically
that would have Son, how typically you have a PLC and then you would
have a robot. Maybe it's an EB Flex picker with its
own robot controller and you're doing handoffs between
between the PLC in the robot controller, over ethernet, IP. Same thing with the Scarab,
you have another robot controller, all both of those robot controllers would be
actually programmed different code structures, right? So you have two different
languages that you have to learn plus your PLC language. Now, it's all done in One
controller using one language. Definitely sounds like it's an improvement on
the way things used to be done. Yeah a little easier. So tell me just about flexible
manufacturing in general. Are you seeing this being implemented at customer sites? Is this
just a demo that we made two weeks ago. It's not just a demo, that we made two weeks
ago. It's been. It's been first and foremost in our hearts for years,
right? It's
we've seen it in the pandemic. We saw it with the recession of 2008-2009.
Manufacturers are creating different package sizes, all the time, right? They're printing
a package size for one reason. Retailer in creating a different package size for another
retailer. And then based on whether it's the seasons, or the next year, more than they
need to scale down. They need to change that package on the Fly.
Flexible manufacturing gives you that ability instead of a fixed machine, that produces one
type of widget you have a machine that can be rapidly reprogrammed or reconfigured to
produce whatever you want. And like we talked about with the use of emulate 3D. If you can
take that package and put it through the virtual or the digital twin, you can test
that before you even hit the The the ground movement. Very nice. Yeah. Thank you. Curtis
for walking us through this demo. I think this is
its maybe my favorite just because I know the story of how scary it was to get it onto the
show floor for us at Rockwell. But thank you so much for giving us some of the benefits of
flexible manufacturing for everyone watching. Stay where you are.
We've got a couple more live tour is coming up in the next few minutes on the show. For
we'll see you back here soon.