Chapter 17

Safety , Training , Maintenance and

Quality

Safety
Safety: It is the state from being protected from
different types of harm/injury or any kind of
damage.
We use robot in Industrial application to remove
human operator from potentially hazard work
environment such as welding, painting, assembly,
pick and place (such as packaging and palletizing),
product inspection, and testing.
Hazard environment contains heat, noise ,fumes,
radiation, toxic gases etc.

 OSHA (Occupational Safety and health Act)

came in 1971 in US by labor dept which
ensures safety and rights of human operator .
Examples are wages, health issues, pensions,
home etc.

Use of Robots
3 occasions when humans are close enough to the
machine to be exposed to danger.
1) During Programming of the robot
2)During operation of the robot cell , when humans work in
the cell.
3)During maintenance of the robot.
Risks can be : collision b/w you and robot.
Electrical shocks , objects dropped from robot gripper/tools,
hydraulic and Pneumatic pressure released from the robot
power supply.

Solutions to the above specified problems

During Programming of the robot

During programming the motion of robot
joints and arms can be made very slow.
Certain safety features can be designed into
the robot work cell such as emergency switch
and different sensors(Optical sensors) to
detect the presence of humans which are very
close to the robot.

During operation of the robot cell

when humans work in the cell.
Humans should work in the cell, conditionaly the
robot power can be controlled either ON/OFF.
The Robot should be placed in physical barriers to
limit the intrusion into the cell.
The periphery of the robot cell must be defined
to the outside the farthest reach of the robot.
Physical barrier :3 options
solutions

During maintenance of the robot.

1) Power can permanently turned OFF.
2) Use of Dead man Switches.
The safety in the cell objects the safety to the
humans as well as to the objects placed in the
cell.

National Bureau of standards define 2

levels of safety sensor in robots
level 1 detects the presence of intruder in the
perimeter boundry of the workcell without
regard to the location of the intruder.
Level 2 designed to detect the presence of an
intruder in the region between the workcell
boundary and the robot work volume.
Level 3 intruder detection in the immediate
vicinity of the robot

Training

Training is the acquisition of knowledge, skills as a result of the teaching of

vocational or practical skills and knowledge that relate to specific tasks.
Training is getting divided into five categories.
Awareness-Provides a survey of robotics, including technology, application
,economics and Social Implications.
Justification: Training in the justification deals with economic issues and unique
problems that arises due to the presence of robots.
Application :Training in the application is designed principally for technical
people(Engineers, Production Engineer, scientists etc. The people design different
robot for different applications or same robot with different Programs.
Operations and Maintenance: Training in operations and Maintenance is provided
for Production Manager and maintenance personnel .These persons are provided
with detailed knowledge and technical skills to represent the equipment. This
includes programming , operations , Maintenance and repair of the robot. The
typical training course may run from minimum 1-2 days to 1-2 weeks.
Safety: Training in safety is provided to all workers, engineers and scientists to
generate awareness against all operations of the machine.

Maintenance
Maintenance involves fixing any sort of
mechanical or electrical device against any
broken or out of service state.
Robot does not need maintenance, their
reliability is good, they state is generally
stable.
Maintenance staff should be highly skilled,
highly trained personnel should be employed.

Maintenance staff
The Staff of the company should be trained and Skilled
for doing modification in the robot.
The Maintenance staff is responsible for two things:
1) Preventive Maintenance: Planned
2) Emergency Maintenance: When a robot
malfunctions or breaks down during regular operation
EM come into play.
In EM staff must respond as quickly as possible to the
problem. The downtime should be very less to avoid
dependency of the robot on other machine.
The crew present at the site should call service call.

 The crew has three functions at the

emergency time:
1) diagnose the problem
2) actual repair
3) checkout the problem to verify the problem
has been rectified.

Preventive Measurement(PM)
PM is to service the equipment at periodic
intervals to reduce the breakdown of the
machine.
It consists of Checking ,cleaning and possibly
replacing certain mechanical and Electrical
Components of the robot at regular time
interval.
The PM is calculated through Mean time
between Failure.

 Mean time between Failures indicates how

long on average the machinery will operate
between breakdowns.
Robot operation for any task can be given by
Availability= (Mean Time B/w Failure.-Mean
Time To Repair)/ Mean Time B/w Failure.

Quality Improvement
Quality of the manufactured product will be improved
by employing robots instead of humans.
The inclusion of robots will bring consistency in
handling and processing of the parts and less damage
to the work-parts due to smooth handling
But employing humans will help us to find defects and
variation in the product.
Robot are highly repeat , regular and obedient.
They require less time as compared to humans
While doing work such as molding , die casting robot
are much consistent and bring uniformity to the
product.