Shipyard Automation
Prodtex provideS system solutions for ship yard automation using standard industry robots. We provide software to plan the production of the robotic welding operations. 3DExperience is an essential system to create the assembly breakdown structure (MBOM) that is the key to plan the automation process. Ship building is challenging in the fact that each plate with stringers to be welded is unique. A robot program is only executed once. We provide an effective programming method to have a lean work flow from the complete ship structure to one robot program for each welding program.
A ship is manufactured in Blocks. The Block concists of a number of Units, the units are then divided into Sub-assemblies, and finally the sub assemblies are broken down into Panel-assemblies, which consist of a panel plate and stringers.
Prodtex delivers the complete manufacturing planning value chain
A typical usecase is to start with the indata to the production system. The shipyard receives Units from the design partner. The Unit is 3DCAD in neutral format, such as STEP. Also a csv file is included, which contains the attributes for each CAD part. These attributes are merged into the CAD models in CATIA from Dassault Systemes.
During the import process of the Sub-assemblies welds are created. The welds are the intersecting lines between the CAD parts. In that process some intersecting lines not releavant for welding is removed. Relevant weld information is taken from the attributes and are saved into the weld lines. This weld information enables us to distinguish the weld between eachother so that they can be automatically assigned to the robot cell to weld them.
Next step of the manufacturing planning process after import is assembly break down structure – the manufacturing bill of material (MBOM). This is done using 3DExperience. The work is about consuming the Engineering Bill Of Material (EBOM) – to place the items on tiles (in 3D). Each tile in the 3D view show the Sub Assemblies and Panel Assemblies. To understand what the MBOM is – think of each tile is something that will exist at some point in the production. It is the tiles that generate the orders to the ERP. In production the operator get this order and make sure that Manufacturing Assembly is built (welded).
After MBOM is created it is time to do the planning of the production activities. Now we enter the time domain. This interface in 3DExperience looks very similar to the MBOM tiles. Instead of the blue tiles we have the grey tiles. Each tile here is the Manufacturing Assemblies, but here we plan the sequence – in what order to produce the Manufacturing Assemblies – the Routing. It is here the batches are planned – namely which assemblies to manufacture first, second, third and wo on. The Gantt chart shows the routing. The time to manufacture each assembly is estimated from the weld lines in each assembly. This work will lead to the conclusion how long time one Unit will take to manufacture.
The robot programming is done semi-automatic. 3DEXPERIENCE DELMIA from Dassault Systemes is used as the user interface. The user loads one sub assembly to the session – positions it in the conveyer and then decide which robot is to weld which welds. No specific robot expert knowledge is required. The system automatically populate the search trajectories and the weld tractories. The user decide the sequence to weld. Once the sequence is defined the user runs a complete simulation to verify ensure there are no collisions and no singularities in the robot.
Contact Henrik.Kihlman@prodtex.com for further information.
Shipbuilding & Ship Performance 4.0
Prodtex presented this customer project at the Shipbuilding & Ship Performance 4.0 7/2.
Shipbuilding & Lifecycle Technology 4.0 – Event Details | Tech 4.0