Smart Painting Line

Today, The Modern Industrial Revolution is on its way towards advancements. The industrial revolution is taking over the entire world at a glance. One of the major goals of today?s industrial revolution is to adopt automation. Almost in every sector such as military, agriculture, automobile, manufac

Project Title

Smart Painting Line

Project Area of Specialization

Mechatronics Engineering

Project Summary

Today, The Modern Industrial Revolution is on its way towards advancements. The industrial revolution is taking over the entire world at a glance. One of the major goals of today’s industrial revolution is to adopt automation. Almost in every sector such as military, agriculture, automobile, manufacturing and design and development etc. Presently, automation is widely being implemented and used in the industrial sector all over the world, this is done in order to increase the efficiency and productivity of the manufactured good. The automobile sector is also using automation to perform various task in the cars body manufacturing, assembly and paint shops in order to increase the per day productivity and efficiency of the cars. But however, the industrial automation is not implemented and used in Pakistan at its maximum pace. Thus, a lot of task are done manually, this affects the efficiency and productivity of the produced parts. In Pakistan, especially in the automobile sector, painting procedures are not fully carried out by robots, instead paid labors (humans) are also employed in painting small parts such as mirror covers, mud flaps, door handles, spoiler and fog lamps etc. And also, automatic painting is adopted only by factories and industries which produce large lot sizes of same type/variant of parts.

Our main project idea glides across the fundamental task of achieving and implementing the industrial automation in Pakistani manufacturing and automobile sectors industries by placing a painting robot in their production line which will be cost effective will be able to paint different parts variants of different families at a time by recognizing its geometry. This will also help in saving human health and will ultimately increase the productivity and efficiency of the produced industrial goods.

Smart Painting Line which will be capable of painting various geometry parts at a time. We will use Image Processing to capture and produce real-time coordinates of the part that is to be painted. By this our aim is to introduce the concept of automatic painting in small scale industries who cannot afford costly automatic painting machines within their vicinity. This will aid small industries in growing and improve their accuracy and productivity. We basically derived the idea of automatic painting from the automobile industries where still small parts such as mud flaps, door handles, spoilers, fog lamps etc. are painted by labors.

Project Objectives

1. To make a Smart Painting Line/Machine and place it in the production line of automobile and manufacturing industries in order increase their efficiency and productivity.
2. To make a cost effective machine so that small scale industries can use can easily afford and shift to modern industrial automation.
3. Replace pre-programmed robot which are capable of painting 1-type of part at a time and incorporate a machine which is capable of painting a variety of different parts at a time.
4. To develop a programming algorithm which is able to detect the part geometry and calculate the part coordinates of the part, i.e. we will do this by Image Processing.
5. Interface the image processing coordinate detection algorithm with the machine hardware and calculate the part coordinates and in real time paint the part as per the geometry.
6. Replace human workers in the industry by introducing this painting machine.
7. Reduce human health risks as human workers doing painting job are exposed to chemical fumes which can cause coughing, sneezing, nausea and breathing issues.

Project Implementation Method

To achieve the final goal i.e. fabrication of Smart Painting Line, a specific methodology is to be followed:

First the entire structure of the smart painting line will be designed and simulated on a Solid Modeling software such as SolidWorks. During the designing phase, we will keep the exact dimension and material specification of the painting machine which we will be using to fabricate in real world. Thus by doing so we will be able to assess the exact loading on the painting machine and we can conduct the stress and strain analysis of the painting machine and check whether the fabricated model be able to resist the structural load and also determine the factor of safety that whether it is above 1. After determining the structural loads of the painting machine, we will also attach the motors to the mechanisms and simulate the structure in order to assure smooth working of the design so that when the exact design is fabricated so there is no sort of errors in its functionality.

Once the designing and simulation phase is complete then we will move on to the purchasing of procurement which will kick start the fabrication process of the smart Painting Line/Machine. The fabrication of the hardware will be carried out in a metal workshop which will involve various operations such as cutting, welding, screwing, grinding, drilling, finishing and painting. The result of this work will accomplish the task of fabricating the conveyor and CNC mechanism.

After the hardware fabrication, the project will move towards its electronics phase where D.C Motors will be mounted on the conveyor and CNC mechanism and necessary wiring and motor drives and power supply will be installed in order to in order to bring the hardware in working mode. Then we will mount all the listed sensors such as Camera, IR sensors, Ultrasonic sensors etc. in order to note and forward the feedback to the controller of the painting machine.

After completing the electronic phase, we switch over to the programming phase which includes studying of image processing and developing an algorithm of detecting the part coordinates by using edge detection method. Camera is used to capture the part image once it enters the workstation (as indicated by the IR sensors) and then image processing applied on it. The programming is done on open CV/python.

Once the programming work is finished, the programming is first tested individually and then the hardware and software are integrated together and series of tests are performed in order to identify and eliminate errors. After the successful testing and elimination of errors, the Smart Painting Line/Machine is ready to paint different geometry parts by detecting its geometry in real-time.

Benefits of the Project

1. The first and foremost importance of this project is that modern industrial automation is achieved. Painting various geometry parts in an industry with a single robot.
2. The Smart painting Machine will replace pre-programmed robots and manual painting (labor work).
3. As the painting machine will be cost effective and real-time programming will help in painting different variety of parts at a time by detecting part geometry via image processing, thus small scale industries involving painting processes can purchase an adopt this machine in their production line.
4. Smart painting Machine will also be able to decrease the painting time of a part (i.e. Mirror Covers, Mud Flaps, Spoilers, Fog Lamp, Door Handles and Luggage Garnish) from 6-11 minutes to 3-4 minutes, thus this will help in increasing the overall productivity and efficiency of the manufactured product.
5. Placing smart painting machine in the production line will also help in reduce human health risks as painting jobs consists of the release of chemical gaseous fumes which are not good for human health and may cause nausea, coughing, sneezing and breathings problems.

Technical Details of Final Deliverable

The overall body of smart painting line consists of two main mechanisms i.e. 1. Conveyor and 2. 3-axis CNC Painting Mechanism.

The Conveyor is made of square shaped 2.5”x1” mild steel pipe. The overall size of the conveyor is 70”x20”x30”. Conveyor has 3 rollers attached to it and a rubber belt runs over these rollers. The rollers are inter-connected with each other via pulley and belt mechanism and also these rollers are connected to a D.C motor of 24V-6A, which drives the conveyor belt. The part to be painted will be placed on the conveyor which will help in transporting the part to and from the painting work area.

The 3-axis CNC painting mechanism is also made of square shaped 2.5”x1” mild steel pipe. The overall size of the CNC mechanism is 24”x20”x24”. This CNC Mechanism is mounted on the conveyor in the middle, thus the area under the CNC mechanism is the painting working area. Ball screws are used to move the 3-axis of the CNC mechanism. These ball screws are rotated with the help stepper motor and stepper drives are also used. The painting spray gun is mounted on the Z-axis of the CNC Mechanism.

The selected controller of this project is Raspberry Pi 3 Model B which is a microcontroller that is equipped with WIFI module. It also has capability to handle and execute multiple commands simultaneously. 

The part is painted as per its geometry, thus the parts geometry is detected by image processing. A camera is mounted on the CNC mechanism which takes the photo of the part as soon as it enters the painting working station, and then image processing is applied on it to calculate the parts coordinates.

Final Deliverable of the Project

HW/SW integrated system

Core Industry

Others

Other Industries

Manufacturing

Core Technology

Robotics

Other Technologies

Others

Sustainable Development Goals

Good Health and Well-Being for People, Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure

Required Resources

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