Self-Learning Robots Find a Better Way to Dry

What does it mean to manufacture a stronger standard, at least it means to solve challenges and help manufacturers achieve more through our people, our technology and our belief that anything is possible? This is manufacturing a stronger standard. A podcast by Doug e! Everyone, and welcome to a new episode of manufacturing a stronger standard by I'm your host today, Tyler kernen. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of the show. Now, in the series that we're in right now, we are bringing awareness to technologies that are new to the fishing industry in North America. But the technology we're talking about today is new to the world. And it's less this self-learning suction blow off robots. And we're really excited to dive into this technology. And joining us today on the podcast is Brad Rupa. He's an engineering manager, and application specialist at e! Corp. and he wears a lot of hats and he has a lot of expertise in spring technology. So, brad, thank you so much for joining us. And also, as always, we have Derek Digby's president at Digby's corporation, unless the USA on the podcast with this as well. Derek, Thanks so much for being here. Well, guys, it is fantastic to have a chance to talk to you. And Derek, we know that you're passionate about self-learning technology. So tell us, how is it changing? Finishing for the general industry. Cell phone ringing technology is allowing more general industry manufacturers the opportunity to use automation or robotics in their finishing systems. And so as we look at empowering their employees, helping them be actively involved in creating robotic programs and solutions in their systems, we're finding that there's also additional ways that we can use this technology in their system. And so it actually we're talking about today, the suction blowoff application. And this came out of a problem that we were faced with as we were building our own system, as we were putting our system in. It was our first fully automated system with chain. We had a manual conveyor system before we put our robotic full system in. And so when we went to a pretreatment stage of a five stage wash and we're putting our system in, we're putting our robots are spraying robots in, we had four of those we're putting in and we were planning how it was going to go and using what we've seen over in Europe. And our goal was to have no more than one or two people in our entire cleanroom where running all four of our robots and our entire pretreatment and everything system after we got running as we put that in, are the finishing company. We're working at that was putting into the five stage watch said, well, you're going to have to have someone stand over here on the backside when as your parts exit your pretreatment stage. I said, why? He said, well, because you have a lot of complex parts and a lot of nooks and crannies. They're going to be holding water. And typically what companies do is they blow the water off mainly with an air wand. So we don't want to do that. So what you can also turn your oven temp up and you can evaporate the water off. That's your oven, your dry off of. And people will turn that up to match kind of the part that holds the most water to evaporate that. And they set that as the temperature and the time, and they need to evaporate kind of their worst part. And then they will then leave that set at that. I said, well, I saw what happened when they turn that off and on for the first time. And I saw that gas meter start spinning. And I just about threw up. I don't want to do that. That is not going to work for us. And they said, well, you could reengineer the parts to add new drilling holes or reposition the part. I said, well, we're a contract job shop. These aren't even our parts. We can't go reengineer it to make it do that. And so then that's when we I remembered being over in Sweden. There is a powder coat company that we are looking at, huge operation, lots of different parts coming through. And they're using less to robots as a touch up after their automatic guns. And we were watching part come by and a guy just bumped through there, came up and walked right in there, grabbed hold of the robot and teach the did the touchup program to do a couple of nooks and crannies in the powder of a couple of parts of the Faraday effect. And it in turn nodded his head and walked away. Know it's like a 20 second program and see these parts coming by to see a tiny puddle of water. I'm like, well, why can't we use the technology to do that. The same? Like, we're not going to have someone stand back here, monotonous job, doing something over and over again. So we got our team together. We got Brad in the room and the rest of our team, we started collaborating and Brad just took off and came up with something really cool. So, brad, I want to hear a little bit more about you. So can you share your background and how you applied the experiences that you've had in the industry to this technology into what you're doing now deceased? Oh, Yeah. I guess it all started. My dad is actually an auto body and restoration technician. So we have our own family business that I was spraying paint when I was eight, nine years old. So it kind of grew up with it got into cars, that kind of thing. And then when I graduated high school, I went on this issue and decided I wanted to apply what I've had and help other companies. So manufacturing engineering was a great fit for me. From there. I've been with several custom coders and. Ms over the years and have walked into their facilities and helped get their payment systems to the most efficiency of the equipment we have, so it's been a really fun road over the last 18 years. And I am enjoying every minute of it here at Digby's. So that's kind of where I came from. I've always landed in paint. Even when I title wasn't there, I was still helping with the systems out. But when Derek was describing the issues that they were running into before and the various technologies they were using. How did you how did you approach that problem? Kind of talk us through what you were seeing and with all of your experience, how you applied your knowledge in that particular case? This is a problem that is dealt with in every system, every way it's set up. If you're applying coding and you're using a wash or a wand wash to clean that part, there's always residual left. A lot of the applications in my previous positions, you literally had a guy standing there with ladders and blow off to try to task with a couple of other things because it's very monotonous. I mean, you're wait for something to come out of an oven or if it's a wand wash or pull an Iraq out, blowing on that off and thrown in the next oven. And as Derrick spoke to the easier way with the less labor is the crank that up and up that the cost is substantial. Cycle times can be up to 45 minutes to an hour depending on the thickness of the part and how much water is remaining after the wash. Also, as Derrick spoke to with the oem, we were able to spend a lot of engineering resources trying to figure out how to put drain holes in these parts to prevent the water from cooling. And then, of course, the other option was to hang the part differently, to paint, which we were actually sacrificing. Your paint quality is no longer presented to the painter. The way that they could properly paint it. With all this background and walking into when I started to guess they were just installing the system, it was definitely something that hadn't been considered because they've never had to deal with the conveyor system. They had the time to pull the parts off and have the workers spend the labor to do it. Well, now our system is 14 feet in the air, so that would require platforms and ladders and would have been a very physically challenging position to do. And it also becomes brader, wouldn't you say? It's also you said that when you manually blowing them off, it gets monotonous. But it also just the time is so frustrating because as a part goes by before the next part goes by, sometimes you have downtime, but not enough to barely do anything else. You can't go do anything else. So there's a lot of standing around before the next party, even comes. And we jokingly said before, I've heard you say that, that positions either the last one that you get before you get fired or the last one you get just before you retire, because it's a tough one. Makes you want to sometimes want to jump off a cliff. And it is it's because basically, if you have multiple tests, you can be doing the chances of you missing a part, especially when you're doing multiple parts on a single rack. We have we have setups here that have 120 parts on one rack. If you're to miss two of them. That's two parts that are not going to make it through quality because they're going to have excess water or even just a higher concentration of our zirconium coatings on them or any coatings that you would be applying in your five stage watches. And with that, there you have poor results, great performance and a defect in the field that you may not catch at the station because it's under the surface, even past that red. Wouldn't you say that one of the things is that that would happen. And the user error happens. And if you have a person manually blowing off parts there, like a lot of companies do, if you miss one when you got a manual, a painter painting, when they go to get to that part, they'll see it. And then you can tip it out, you can blow it out or you can skip it and come back to it. But now we add automation and a robot that doesn't see that part. And now we have a whole new problem when something kind of new as general industry of manufacturers look at adding robots to the system, we lost that second layer of visual quality. That is correct. I mean, because these parts you're basically you're touching on that load. And you're touching them again. And so the rest of the system, when it's set up properly, is, as you said, a couple of people will be able to run the entire system. But even back to the manual painting as a manager of several painters, several shifts. 20 four, seven hour operations they don't catch at all. Even though even your primer painters, I have had several parts come out of the oven with the little corners with absolutely no paint on them because the water finally evaporated out and you've left that blemish. But again, the other the hidden aspect, the one the. You don't see it that on those. It's the fact that if you have higher concentrations of your cleaning chemical or your conversion coating on there, that will fail out in the field, you won't see that. So by adding the automation and making sure that every part is treated the same way, you are able to use some of the benefits of not having to boil every second of that water out. And getting that part temp up to places where sometimes they can't be bread. We're also getting courted by quite a few chemical companies right now as well. I think because of our application and our solutions that we're using. Can you kind of explain why they see that as a big, big deal or an advantage? It's just a good marriage of technology and process. So now that from a chemical company standpoint, they can use a more aggressive or even a faster building chemical on the part because they know it's going to be taken off before it hits that dry cycle. Usually those dry off ovens are at minimum 25 to 30 feet away, which at the slower speed change or the slower change speeds you see on the washes, that could be up to 5 to 10 minutes after it's left the last stage. A lot of these chemicals aren't made to dry in place. If they do, before they're completely removed, they'll leave a residue behind. And also, people are always looking to how do we get more throughput? How do we keep these things moving in at the speeds that are the volumes that these people are saying production needs to be to make a profit. These days, that it's just it's too much for one person to keep up with. Like another aspect. If you're doing 120 parts and something happens outside of what you're focused on, there's a really good chance you're going to make that quality mistake and you're going to have a couple of those parts of it go through the oven. And if we're set up at our lower our temps that we're able to run, that part's going to be a defect. One other thing with the way you talk about production and the velocity increase that they're looking to try to get or now add in maybe a robotic application to your spraying pattern that opens up the opportunity to add the solution to their line very easily as well. Is that one that thing I didn't know would happen when we put this in is the decrease, the increased production, you can get. Now the paint, the pretreatment no longer becomes a bottleneck. Can you explain why that happens now that a dry off oven actually is a dry off oven? It's not an evaporation oven. What is how does that impact productivity? Well, yeah, it's your dwell time. So a lot of times ovens are kind of the bottlenecks, bottleneck systems, whether it's the oven or in this case, to dry off oven. If you've got a lot of large parts that will hold water, your only option in the past was to blow them off. And there's still areas where you have laminate sheets that you've just got to boil it out with the application of the less suction blow off robot. We now can go in after those parts before they hit the oven in our dwell times instead of being 45 minutes to an hour can be down to 30 minutes, depending on what temp you want to run that up. It We're actually running our ovens currently at 150 degrees for 30 minutes. Our time in the paint booth is 6 minutes, so it works out perfectly for our Q times that our oven will never be our bottleneck, again. No now it's on to of any kind of move. Move that down the line to what you're bottlenecks tend to be in the system. So repeat that was that that's a pretty huge, I think, statement of we have complex parts, job shop parts that hold a lot of water. We have nobody standing back there blowing off parts. And we're running our oven at, what, 150 degrees? 150 degrees at a 30 minutes. And that's not a day. Well, that's a 30 minutes through. So if that part enters, we're running. We do run 24 minute. So it would only be in that oven for 10 minutes. If it ran straight through. But because of the power and free system we have, we are able to time that thing at 30 minutes, release it on to the crew. So before that, when we were, before we had this set up, we were running our oven temp at what was it to 20 to 20. So that we were making sure we could boil if we had to, which we didn't want to because we were blowing parts off. But if we missed, if we miss, we had redundancy. The issue was our chemical company warned us that we were going to overbaked our zucconi finish our thinner parts. We were pushing the edge of what they wanted to see. So the solution, as most. Are there was a want and a need to find another way to do this. As I said, our lines are very high to make sure we get the maximum out of the coding area of our robot. And it just wasn't feasible for some. And to be on a platform with a ladder on top of the platform to keep both these parts. So one thing that was interesting is that we created the solution for ourselves, which then offered another additional solution to better go back to our sprey customers, whether it be powder, whether it be liquid. And so as we launched this solution at fab tech in 2019 we've now actually had some companies have come talking to us. And this is their main pain point. This is, this was the static application. And then by getting this solution ready now, it opened up another door for them to be able to finish the part. Now after their oscillating guns as a touch touchup. So it was kind of interesting. I thought it would only be used as an ATM. Like if you've got your parts, fix it. And we're up and we're powder coating or liquid spraying your parts. Now, if this is a problem, you can add this very cost effectively because we're already communicating with your line. We're already you've already got your parts presenting and working with your spraying robots. So now we can drop one of these in and automate that reduce job and temp and go. And now we have some companies that this is such a pain point for them. These other hurdles of the contamination issues, the other problems they have that you can start with this one. And now you now then can look at your spray application as well, which has kind of been a kind of a fun surprise for us. Yeah, because the early their only other option at that point is a larger night or setting up six nozzles at the end of their wash. And that is an option out there. But the air consumption alone, those are always on. They see the part. They are not there. You can't really adjusting to get into those nooks and crannies, which with the lesser robot, we simply guide the one to where it needs to be. We can reproduce that. And you can get within a couple inches of the part. It's going to be out of the way for the next part when you have a different configuration come through, that helps not blow off little parts, too. I hear a lot of people complain that they try to use their knives and they're blowing their little parts around. They get Swayne and moving and sometimes they get knocked off and it didn't get it off anyway. So you blew a ton, a ton of air at something and you still have your one pocket of water that's still there. And as you spoke to once, once you've got the fixed wing in place and honestly, the affection. We have is just simple. Same line hooks. It's nothing you're redesigning every time you want to hook a part. It's used to hooks you've got and make sure you maintain that. One other really cool thing that came out of our section blowoff application that we created for dakis corporation. As we then looked at our lesson to USA customers that were coming to us. And then we're presenting the solution and show what we had created was that we thought that our solution would be used solely as an add on to the spray side. So as we added to our customers, let's do say customers powder coat systems, and there are liquid applications that this is a really easy. You've already fixture to your parts. You've already you're already commute. We're communicating with your conveyor line and we're just adding one more trigger and dropping another robot in to automate another manual application. And so we saw that is the Avenue that it would progress. And what we've seen is there's a couple customers actually came to us that this was the main pain point for them is that they are trapped water causing problems with their when they get into the spray side or they have having they're having issues of that buildup of the dried razu causing contamination issues, all the things we're talking about. We've heard people come and then that's the conversation starter for us to look for solutions to use the less the technology to help them in their finishing system. So as we get their process down to build a used robotics to help with the suction blowoff, now the same thing happened again. Well, now all of a sudden, the same customer. Now is ready to build the use of a robot in a powder application at the end as a touchup for their oscillating guns. So they are having trouble with standing water and then they get hit with the oscillating guns as it left the pretreatment. And so they had a person blowing off all the parts that came by. But as Brad said earlier, they would miss them. But since it was then going right into an oscillating system, no one else saw it. So there was not another level of quality to build a double check that person. And so by the time it got to the oscillating guns, the part was wrecked or it had to be reworked. We had to try to pull it off the line before it got cured and it created a huge problem. So so we looked at adding, they looked at the suction blow off robots to start with. And then now that we've solved that problem for them, now they can add another one after the oscillating gun since that problem had been taken care of. And now they're ready to just touch it up with the robot. And it turned out to be a really cool application. But the great part about this technology is you don't have to have high. The precision texture. We do need to be able to repeatable, but we need to be repeatable within, we say quarter to half inch, honestly, we're using purchased hooks and hooks that we made here ourselves at the base. And we're also offering hooks to our customers. It's not something that you're going to have to redesign the wheel. Every time you want to put a new hook up, you use what you have existing and do a different configuration for each part when Rosa Parks works really well. A lot of our customers have used the racks that they have, and we just they have to be very meticulous about how they use them or they hang the parts and have a little bit of documentation. So that guy at the load unload line knows what was done last time when you program the part. So it doesn't have to be a scary, ominous thing. Brad, I think that's a really good point. And if it is, we also offer services to help with that. We can use our experience that we've had and we can look at the application that's there. And sometimes are like, you know, these are where the original hooks you had 40 years ago when your company opened. I think that we need to look at getting some new ones or we can say, you know what, we can work with this. But if you got a couple of these are bent, we need to throw these out. And then if they're still nervous or if we think it's going to be an issue, we also design, and help them do fixtures from scratch as well. And there's a lot of different ways that our customers can get value from the experiences that we had. And not all of it is scary to start over from scratch. Super customer extreme. Correct so it just it's getting that same presentation. And honestly, even the lines that I ran with no automation, I preach that up and down that you want to present that part of in the same way every time. Well, now we've just kind of taken a one step further and ask that it is the same. And here's what we're going to document. To do it to make it. So anyone can walk up here and put it on the line, send it down and we'll get a good part out the other side. So I'll jump back in here at this point, just to say that we've had a fantastic conversation here today, and I've really enjoyed getting to learn a little bit more about this new solution that's based on your experiences and really utilizes Brad's expertise. And it's been really, really interesting to listen to Derek. I want to bring it back to you and ask, you know, what are some of the changes that you've seen in the finishing department as a result of all of this technology? What changes at least, have you seen? One of the things. I think that's really key to this is that we're empowering the people that are there and you're using the people and you're creating better opportunities for them to do more with their time. So instead of standing there and worrying about missing a pocket or a hole or trying to scrape, get a part off quickly before it gets through oscillators or over to your paisner, you're now or waiting for the next part to come. We've now taken a job that frankly, no one really wants and it's really hard to fill. So we now we're able to use the people that are the companies or our customers that we're coming to use the people you have and the experience they have to build a to build quickly and very easily automate this process did reduce your oven, Tamsen, and to decrease the overhead of your system through labor, through your utilities. And now we created a better quality part. Every time I hear that the robot blowing, I didn't have to be around there. If I'm in the clean area, I hear I hear the robot blowing water out. I feel good. And it's I actually smile every time I hear it. It really does. It's because it's another thing. I don't worry about that at all. I listen, I hear it. It makes me feel good. And I keep moving and we're working on something else. And now we have our team now is able to do titrations on the water. They're able to go look in thickness on the parts and they're not worried about that either. So it just it takes worries away. It makes automation easier and it helps make a better quality product. And by reducing your overhead and your cost of your system, it's just it's been a really neat and fun project. And we're really proud of what our team put together and how it works in and for so many companies. Brad, anything you want to add to Derek's comments? It's just one more thing that you're going to have your expert do it. That's kind of what we preach in the last society, is we don't want someone new to walk into that paint booth and have to learn how to paint that part. We're going to take the person that already knows how to do it. It's the same thing with all these parts of each part has got kind of its own characteristic, your personality, and you need to attack in a certain way. Well, now the guy that's been doing that can do it once and see the result of what he did. I mean, it's that fast. And so you do the first set of parts. You back away and watch the second part. It done with the robot. And at that point, you can check it over, make sure all the parts are coming off the dry off of an engine, except. Thank you. And you're off to the next thing, you're not continually if you're stuck at the front of the wash, you can't see what's coming up. So it allows them to do that quality check and make sure nothing's getting through where they just don't have the time to do it. Otherwise That's a really good point. And it's something we hadn't really talked about up until this point in the podcast. But let's talk a little bit more about how this technology works. We explained a lot of the way in the what, but let's talk a little bit more about how and maybe get into some of the details there. The lesson of cell phone technology kind of works off of the experience of your employer. So the gentleman that knows the part knows where the pockets are going to be, will simply put the robot into each mode. Enter the robot area, grab the nozzle. There's multiple buttons on our handle, which detaches when not in use. You'll attach your handle the top barrel. There's actually two barrels in the box or on the suction blow off. And the top is actually a vacuum. The bottom is a wide pattern fan, depending on what part they have or what they want to do. They can trigger one top barrel, bottom barrel or both. I mean, depending on what you're doing, sometimes you're kind of doing a little bit of both at the same time. So some guys will only use the fan on 90% of their parts. And some gentlemen have parts that are small enough that they can use the vacuum. So it's you walk in, do your past record, all of your triggering. If you're using suction on the top, top row and you're blowing off everything in the bottom row records, all that. So as soon as you're done, you'll hit stop, stop train. And as you're walking out of the booth, it's already written that program and the next rail coming down the line will run exactly what you just did. So you're basically playing back every movement, every actuation that you did in the prior rail. One cool thing about that, as I've seen you and the rest of some of our team do on our system, has our complex parts. We don't have a side by side per se, that we can say all the time. We've some of our customers have a complicated side and they only need a robot on one side. Ours are all over the place. We have one on each side of our conveyor line. And so when our team trains the robot and when we're done blowing, blowing or sucking the water out and hit, stop it. Automatic going, automatic mode, they walk away, hit the door, it's running the next rail and we walk over, grab the next one, and then we train the other side. And then we walk away. And then they go off to work on something else. And then the rest of the rails come in are being taken care of, which I thought, is it is a really neat, quick thing that happens. Yeah, the ability to the next race is already being done by the first robot that you're training the second. So you're getting a real time. You know exactly what you're going to see on that second half. You're not trying to assume what the first program took off. It's already there. You're doing exactly what you just worked on just seconds before. Well, guys, as we begin to bring our conversation to a close today, is there anything we haven't mentioned yet that you want to make sure that we talk about when it comes to the self-learning section blowoff robots? Is there anything we haven't discussed, be it benefits, be it how the technology works or anything along those lines that we want to make sure that we discussed before, we wrap things up today, I think it's just Tyler. It's just a suction blowoff application with the less to self-learning technology just automates in a very simple, easy way, a process that causes a lot of problems, one that's often overlooked that maybe people never thought about automating. But it can have a huge benefit. And very quick Roi to better help your company bread, anything that you'd like to add as well. Yeah, Tyler, I mean, we're just it's all about fine tuning your process and limiting those variables. And with this technology, you are able to reduce your up and temps by up to 30% And you can increase your throughput because one thing we really haven't even touched on yet, as we can program at one speed. And you can run to the next beat. So if you need to push the output of your system for a day to meet customer demand, you have up to a 20% increase you can run the line at and the robot will stay with it. Other things look at is improved salt spray results. So if you're getting outliers and your cell sprays where you're having some parts that are passing flying colors and you're having a few that are having anomalies, this will help and eliminate one more of those variables. To give you that quality part, we'll guys, thank you so much again for joining us for this episode of manufacturing, a stronger standard podcast from Doug E. We appreciate it very much. And you shared a lot of insights and a lot of expertise here. That I think is going to be extremely valuable for people, for people across the general industry, and so it's been an absolute pleasure. Derek and brad, thank you again for joining us. Thank you, Tony. Everybody, thank you for joining us for this episode as well. Of course, we have a number of series and other episodes that we've recorded on this podcast that you should go back and listen to. We've talked about upskilling the workforce, which Derek mentioned a little bit of earlier on in podcast and a number of other product focused podcasts as well. So make sure to go back and check out those previous episodes. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify to stay up to date with the latest in thought leadership from the folks at dig E and of course, we'll be back soon with new episodes. But until then, I've been your host today, Tyler. Thanks for listening.