Fibre laser cutting systems have revolutionised the sheet metal processing market with their high speed. Handling systems that can keep up with the speed of the laser cutting machines take over the automatic loading and unloading. However, inefficiency often still prevails in the handling of metal oddments. Here, the fully automatic robotic application LaserFLEX from Remmert offers a solution for returning oddments to the laser cutting process fully automatically.
More efficiency and benefit per sheet through automated reuse
Ideally, as many cuts as possible are produced from a metal sheet in a single laser cutting process, so that as little scrap as possible is produced with the remaining sheets. But especially with small and medium quantities, there is often still enough use in the oddment for further cuts. In practice, oddments are usually stored temporarily by hand or even scrapped if the labour costs do not justify the high effort. "In today's world, this makes neither ecological nor economic sense," thinks Stephan Remmert, owner and managing director of Remmert GmbH. His company based in Germany is specialized in storage systems and handling systems that can serve laser cutting machines from various manufacturers with sheets at high speed. Until now, the focus of both customers and Remmert systems has been on the automated logistics of sheet metal blanks. "Shortage of skilled workers, unreliable supply chains, excessive material inventories, waste of resources, the trend towards more variance with smaller quantities; these are all current pains of our customers that we want to address with new solutions," says Remmert.
Automated return of metal sheet oddments to the storage system
Remmert's fully automatic LaserFLEX robot application is basically equipped with two automation units, a vacuum unit for loading and a fork unit for unloading after the cutting process. This division of work ideally supports the high speed of the laser. The new option of reusing oddments is taken over by the loading unit. This picks up the remaining sheet after the cutting process and stores it back in the connected storage system, ready for reuse. In order to optimally use storage space, the oddments are simply placed on blanks of the same thickness. If the blanks underneath have to be accessed, the oddment is parked on a buffer rack.
Keeping an eye on the total stock of sheets
SMART Control, the central control system of the Remmert system, takes care of the management and logistics control. The integrated Warehouse Management System (WMS) manages the total stock including both blanks and oddments. The Control module visualises the stock levels as well as all processes and system statuses in an intuitive dashboard.
In this way, Remmert offers its customers not only a highly efficient form of sheet metal processing and reuse, but an efficient control unit to boot. "Many material flow systems offer users a limited global overview of all processes. Our WMS with SMART Control also solves this problem and optimally complements the LaserFLEX system," adds Stephan Remmert and continues: "Our goal is always not simply to develop 'just' technical solutions, but to keep usability in mind above all. With SMART Control we have succeeded in this. At the same time, the WMS supports the sustainable use of resources. For companies in an increasingly competitive environment, this is an advantage that should not be underestimated."
More overview, sustainable materials management, a smooth, highly automated flow of goods and sophisticated usability - Remmert is setting standards in the industry with its LaserFLEX cutting system and its innovative software solutions and is consistently pursuing its path from a supplier of storage systems to a holistic provider of smart goods logistics solutions.
