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igm flexible manufacturing system (FMS) geared up for 1300 subway bogies per year at Hebei Jingche Rail Transit Vehicle Equipment Co., Ltd.

16.06.2021

In November 2017, the Beijing Rail Transit Technology and Equipment Group established the company Hebei Jingche Rail Transit Vehicle Equipment Co., Ltd.

In only two years, their company built up a latest state of the art railway vehicle factory, located in Baoding City. The factory covers a construction area of about 470,000m², which is the size of app. 66 FIFA football fields.

The factory of Hebei Jingche Rail Transit Vehicle Equipment Co., Ltd. is home to an igm bogie FMS with a capacity of 1300 subway bogies per year on a two shift basis.

The igm bogie FMS was delivered in 2020 and covers a workshop area of 200 m in length and 25 m in width. 

The FMS line was a turn-key project for igm and included design, line layout, development of fixtures, supply of all equipment and commissioning up to hand over to the customer.

 

OUTLINE PARAMETERS

Among many world-class machinery and equipment, the factory of Hebei Jingche Rail Transit Vehicle Equipment Co., Ltd. is also home to an igm bogie FMS with a capacity of 1300 subway bogies per year on a two shift basis.

The igm bogie FMS was delivered in 2020 and covers a workshop area of 200 m in lengths and 25 m in width.

The FMS line was a turn-key project for igm and included design, line layout, development of fixtures, supply of all equipment and commissioning up to hand over to the customer.

MAIN COMPONENTS OF THE FMS

The FMS line holds the following main systems:

  • 1 Robotic assembly & tack-welding system
  • 6 Universal welding robot systems for bogie side frame and cross beam
  • 2 Universal welding robot systems for bogie main frame
  • 2 Rail guided vehicles (RGV) for automatic loading and unloading
  • 1 high raise storage system with embedded RGV and 36 buffer stations
  • 1 main control room for supervision of the FMS
  • Pallet system to clamp and transport side frame and cross beam workpieces
  • Numerous manual workstations for inspection, grinding, etc.
  • Numerous EOT cranes

HIGH-END ROBOT SENSOR TECHNOLOGY

All bogie main frame welding robot systems are equipped with latest sensor technology, using the igm laser camera, type iCAM-100, to detect perfectly the precise location of the joint and online track the welding joint during welding.

TANDEM HIGH PERFORMANCE WELDING TECHNOLOGY APPLIED

To ensure the high quality root welding at the inside of the bogie side frame and the bogie main frame, single wire welding process is used.

For the outside welding followed of the bogie components, each robot can exchange the single wire torch automatically to a TWIN wire welding torch for outside welding by a full automatic torch exchange, to achieve highest deposition rate.

To ensure constant high welding quality, a TPSi 500 TWIN digital inverter welding power source from the Austrian based Fronius International GmbH is used at the igm robots (www.fronius.com)

An automatic pre-heating system  can be automatically picked up by the robot arm and will automatically pre-heat the welding joints before robotic welding if and where required.

 

QUALITY & RELIABILTY FIRST – THE PRINCIPLE RULE FOR AN igm FMS

WORKPIECE TRACING BY RFID

A well thought out system for tracing workpieces by using RFID tags located on each workpiece in connection with automatic RFID readers and handheld RFID readers over the complete FMS line will allow complete traceability of process flow, cycle times for each process, workers etc.

HIGHEST FLEXIBILTIY ON igm FMS LINES

Depending on the production requirement from the customer´s MES/ERP system, the igm FMS main control system, type I4I-F, automatically arranges all necessary jobs and sequences for the logistics, assigns jobs for each robot system and distributes work orders for the manual welders, using their handheld tablets.

The air conditioned main control room is located at an elevated height, housing three DELL servers in a 19" server rack and having 6 wide-screens to monitor and supervise the complete FMS line.

A BOSCH IP surveillance system installed throughout the FMS line and remote control of each robot system and RGV, allow the FMS supervisor to monitor and remote control the complete line from the main control room.

In addition to one FMS supervisor at the main control room, only 3 - 4 robot operators and workers for the manual stations are required to run the FMS line at full capacity.

AUTOMATIC LOGISITCS ENSURE SHORTEST TACT TIME

Automatic guided vehicles (AGV) will automatically pick up the pallets with the bogie child parts from a neighbouring workshop and deliver the pallets to the FMS workshop directly to the automatic assembly & tack-welding system, where a handling robot will pick-up the child parts from the pallets and assembly the bogie component.

Once a handling robot has fed the automatic assembled & tack-welded bogie component into the FMS line, a rail guided vehicle (RGV) will pick-up the pallet with the bogie components and automatically serve each robot system, buffer station, high-rise storage system, manual station, etc.

At the end of the FMS line, the finished railway bogie will be delivered to the unloading stations by the RGV.

WELDING ROBOTS TO COMPLETE THE SUBWAY PRODUCTION

Besides the bogie FMS line, Hebei Jingche Rail Transit Vehicle Equipment Co., Ltd. also operate four stand-alone bogie welding robot system from igm.

Additionally, four portal gantry systems for robotic welding of aluminium large components and the welding of subway final assemblies are used for the production of aluminium floors, sidewalls and roofs as well as for the final assembly of the subway cars.

igm is proud, to support Hebei Jingche Rail Transit Vehicle Equipment Co., Ltd. in their pursuit, to deliver first class railway vehicles.