Standard Machine Tending Systems

Move past the part rack with MWES' Drop-in robotic machine tending systems

There are many machine tending systems on the market today. Why should you choose our solution over the others? One word: flexibility.

Midwest Engineered Systems takes machine tending to the next level by utilizing advanced technology to reduce labor further and increase flexibility. The MWES standalone, drop-in system is ideal for manufacturing settings that see a high mix of components with varying levels of inter-part commonality. This comes from the system’s ability to operate without relying on custom presentation racks and technician-developed programming for every new part style introduced. Removing reliance on both saves costs by reducing the need to purchase expensive fixturing and retaining a dedicated robot programmer to update the system.

The advanced MWES cells are designed to bring the true promise of automated machine tending to production facilities, by reducing the need for workers to fill part racks for presentation to the machine. The machine tending cells are also designed to offer value-added operations that can sidestep resetting machines or require operator intervention to do simple, off-machine tasks. These features allow employees to tend to more valuable operations while increasing efficiency.

Benefits to Standard Machine Tending Systems

There are many benefits available to the users of an MWES system that can change the way companies approach machine-tending processes. The system’s functionality goes beyond just adding and removing production parts from a machine, it adds the opportunity to add flexibility and expandability to production operations.

Eliminate the need for custom racks and fixtures

MWES’ standalone, drop-in systems operate on machine vision and modifiable programming rather than rigid programming and specialized part fixtures to offer a step-change in machine tending operations. The robotic system uses machine vision to identify incoming parts and their orientation then relays that information to the arm’s control system. This means parts don’t have to be staged into racks perfectly, they just need to be presented to the machine with a certain side up.

Add parts quickly with easily modifiable programming

Machine programming innovates the process of adding new workpieces to the machine. By simply copying a previous machine tending control program and modifying for the new part, reasonably similar new components can be added to the system. This can be done directly at the machine itself using its touch screen HMI to facilitate. The intuitive process does not require highly skilled programmers, either. Many times, it can be performed by unskilled machine operators with minimal training.

Integrating extra steps and processes

Our system goes past merely placing the part in a machine and taking it out again. MWES’s machine tending systems can offer interim or finishing steps in the machine tending process to help close the automation loop on more complex machining operations. With capacity for off-machine operations, the work cell can blow off parts, perform deburring, inspections or other operations at any stage of the tending process. This is in addition to having the capability to perform repositioning operations on parts automatically. The re-gripping allows for working on other areas of the workpiece that couldn’t be operated on otherwise.