Page 70 - Glass-Technology International no. 1/2018

AUTOMATION AND DEVELOPMENTS

the glass industry for the and ‘freedom of move- One of the most immedi- If you don’t use
transport and handling of ment’ of robots could be ate ones is the fact that it water, then how do
glass sheets. Several com- used in glassworks. At allows you to work in a you manage the glass
panies were already pro- the same time, we carried clean and dry environment, powder that is gener-
moting their solutions for out research on the idea without having to deal with ated by the seaming
automated loading and of ‘dry’ grinding for glass troublesome sludge caused process?
unloading of glass proces- edges - which is a request by water-cooled seam-
Stefano Bavelloni
sing equipment, developed that we had received and ing processes. So there is
in close collaboration with which caught our atten- no dirty water to be col- The dust is removed by a
external companies spe- tion. Bringing together lected and cleaned and the powerful suction system
cialised in integration of the findings of these stud- absence of water on the and transported through a
robotic systems. ies, we found out that ro- machine actually also pro- group of self-cleaning fil-
Neptun, instead, wanted bots can be used for glass longs the working life of ters. The dust is then col-
to enter the automation processing, in particular the machines. lected in a special collector,
industry creating a spe- seaming, with an extreme- Dry processing also ena- which can be cleaned very
cific department here in ly interesting outcome bles to work in-line avoid- easily and with minimal ef-
the company, with a team in terms of costs, speed, ing the need for pre-wash- fort, without creating any
of qualified people, with quality and flexibility, a ing before going to the kind of pollution in the
highly specialised expertise real technological break- washing machine. Another factory waste water sys-
in robotics, in order to be through! advantage is that the glass tem. This makes the equip-
able to develop custom- Dry processing sheets are and remain clean ment also environmentally
ized and flexible solutions and dry, and thus they friendly.
completely owned - and Dry processing, i.e. with- can be processed directly
Matteo Rolla
financed - by the company out the use of water to cool in line - but we can also
itself. So the software is down the glass and the prepare ‘off-line’ batches As a matter of fact, we
completely developed in- wheels during the seam- ready and stored on glass were surprised ourselves
house. ing process, leads to sev- racks without need to be by the optimal results of
Moreover, we did not just eral important advantages. washed and dried. this suction system, we
want to have robots for
the transport and handling
of the glass sheets, but we
wanted to introduce au-
tomation in other types of
processes.
The mission of this division
is to develop intelligent
solutions combining the
typical features of robotic
industrial processes (high
productivity, quality and
precision) with the flexibil-
ity, ease of use, and costs
optimization required in all
manufacturing companies.

Stefano Bavelloni
When we put together
our team “Neptun Au-
tomation”, we started to
study how the cinematics

68 Glass-Technology International 1/2018