Determining the stacking height of housing parts

The task

For further processing, stacked housing parts must be removed from a material container and placed in the correct position. This requires determining the current stack height in order to use it to align the robot gripper, including the cameras mounted on it, at the correct working distance for determining the position.

The challenge

Since the sensor is meant to cover a large working range, linearity over the entire working range is particularly important. Housing parts can be made of different materials, such as carbon fiber composites or aluminum, which makes exact detection even more difficult.

Our solution

For fast and process-reliable gripping of objects, the FT 55-RLAM triangulation sensor is ideal due to its accuracy, especially its linearity in the 1/10mm range. Already during its development, the light spot was optimized for metallic surfaces such as car body sheet metal or aluminum. The distance sensor is available with two working ranges, so that a medium working range of 120 - 600 mm or 200 - 800 mm can be selected depending on the requirements of the objects to be destacked. Thanks to its compact and robust design, it can be easily integrated into the robot gripper. Its display, which can be used to read off the mm values and conveniently change the necessary settings, makes work even easier. With the analog outputs current/voltage optionally available in the sensor or the integrated IO-Link interface, it can be electrically connected to the sensor/actuator modules usually present on the robot gripper.