Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
in Control
PERGAMON Annual Reviewsin Control 23 (1999) 165-170
many factors such as engineering requirements. are several end of life options existing, namely:
manufacturability, performance, environmental • upgrade,
effects, costs and time. Such considerations are not • reuse, recondition,
mutually exclusive, but all decisions must be • re-manufacture,
recognized as a compromise between different levels • resale,
of reliability, performance maintainability and • recycling of materials and
environmental friendliness in order to achieve • disposal.
minimum life time expenditures. Every product has
environmental impacts which are determined by their Almost all of them require some form of dis-
design, adverse environmental impacts will be assembly. As already pointed out, the tremendous
minimized or designed out. Decisions made at the amount of electronic scrap deduce a need for
design stage affect a product's impact on the automated solutions. Because of the particular
production and recycling processes, the threats to characteristic and requirements of disassembling
human health and the environment and the tasks, fully automated disassembling needs structures
characteristics of waste streams. and methods for a semi-automated disassembling
with both, use of manual and automated (e.g.
Because of the complexity of electronic scrap robotized) workplaces to meet the requirements of a
recycling, various topics are addressed, like: new life cycle strategy.
• collection logistics,
• disassembly, At present, recycling and disassembling of PCs gains
• reuse of usable parts, more and more importance. Until now, there are
• recovery of precious and rare materials, some pilots for automated disassembling of
• recycling of non-hazardous materials and keyboards (e.g. Austrian Research Centre in
• disposal of hazardous and toxic substances. Seibersdorf), monitors (e.g. Siemens, Germany) and
printed circuit board (University Braunschweig) - but
for there is no (semi-) automated solution for the PC
2. DISASSEMBLY (STATE OF THE ART) itself.
Until now a very high standard in the field of All existing pilot or laboratory systems for automated
automation and robotics have been reached, but disassembling do not fulfil the demands for the
focused only on assembly. Few parts of electronic future. Compared to the planned disassembly system,
scrap are recycled after disassembling, however, the already existing concepts are very inflexible and only
degree of automation is still very small - only some developed for a special task or product - e.g. few
pilot or demonslration projects are realized mainly in types of telephones, MiniDiscs or IBM Keyboards. If
research institutes. For the expected mass of products there are only minor changes to the product, these
which will come back to recycling and disassembling very inflexible systems must be adapted with very
companies in the future, the existing manual high costs. Hence for the industrial user such a
disassembly is totally insufficient. Especially parts of system is only economical for large quantities of the
high quality products, i.e. those which contain same product. A further problem arises (in most
precious metals, are disassembled in order to reuse cases) when used products are going to be
some components. For a lot of products, especially disassembled. The characteristics (geometric form,
those used in private households, the effort of manual dimensions,...) of these can differ enormously and a
work would not be worth it. Today most household ,,non intelligent system" is not able to take them apart
products are shredded without any disassembly. In efficiently.
this case a separation of toxic components is not
economically feasible and therefore not done at all.
3. DISASSEMBLY CELLS
Because of the tremendous increasing amount of
electronic products to be recycled ( and also to be As pointed out earlier ,,stilT' automatized
disassembled), makes it necessary to (partially) disassembly in single purpose cells - only for one
automate this separation process to increase the product (e.g. one type of PC's) - cannot be
effort. economically operated today. The number of devices
or parts to be collected and concentrated on the place
However also for the disassembly processes high of the disassembly cell is usually to low for a two
flexibility, high accuracy, vision sensors and low- shift working of the cell. For example in the case of
cost will be necessary. The automation potential will computer-keyboards of a distinct type, all keyboards
be of the most important productivity factors for this disposed all over Europe per year could be
new production process and becomes a new disassembled in three month by this fully
challenge for engineering. automatized cell.
Especially for electric and electronic products, there Therefore forming of relevant product groups
B. Kopacek, P. Kopacek / Annual Reviews in Control 23 (1999) 165-170 167
(disassembly families) will be the key factor for the Contrary to the assembly process for disassembly it's
whole system. Here the optimum for the very important having no operations with single
characteristics of disassembly, design and recycling parts. Therefore the number of single operations is
must be found. These so called ,,disassembly lower and as a consequence the costs of the
families" are groups of similar or different products equipment too.
that require nearly the same disassembly operations -
carried out with the same disassembly tools. For the development of a modular, flexible
disassembly cell some of the modules are available
from assembly cells, but research on the following
3.1 A modular system for intelligent, flexible subjects is necessary:
disassembly cells
• Conception of sensor guided robots for
The design of a disassembly cell is an important topic disassembly.
and is carried out today by concurrent engineering
methods. Fig. 1 shows all different parts of a modular, • Evaluation of necessary tools and grippers
flexible disassembly cell. According to the figure the which fit to the required separation
main modules of such a cell are: techniques.
• Conception of extremely flexible and modular
--. Industrial robots or handling devices with special
gripping devices for disassembly.
features like high accuracy, path- and force
control. • Evaluation of possible implementation of
methods of artificial intelligence in the cell
Special gripping devices for a broad spectrum of control with a minimum of sottware costs and
parts with different geometries and dimensions computing time.
--, Disassembly tools especially developed for robots • Evaluation of best suiting vision system and
product groups, considering present product
Feeding systems for the products to be categories and discernible future design
disassembled trends.
• Evaluation of interfaces for the integration of
Transport systems - similar as for assembly cells a vision system to semi-automated cells,
adding visual identification and physical
Fixture systems for parts with different measurement methods for the activation of the
geometries and dimensions robot control:
- pre-selection of parts,
Manual disassembly stations - sample to measurement device, or vice
versa,
Intelligent control units able to process
- sample or surface preparation.
information from extended sensors
• Cost estimation of adapting a vision system to
(,,Low Cost'') Vision systems for part recognition the indentified needs of the product and the
necessary robot manipulation considering the
Various sensors for force and moment limitations, industrial environment.
position, distance, etc.
168 B. Kopacek, P. Kopacek /Annual Reviews in Control 23 (1999) 165-170
~mbly ~
and
Symbol Database
I selection of the
assembly llme
Planning Database and
price calcukl~on
evalualion
of the results
Upper Cartridge reaches its destination. At the next modules for such cells or in their design and
stations of the system the Clamping Plate, the Shutter development.
Lock, and finally the Shutter are removed with They can use such cells for an efficient
special tools. The proper course of these operations disassembly of electr(on)ic parts.
are also controlled by sensors. Every part is given
into a specific container, where they are stored for Such modular, intelligent, flexible disassembly cells
further processes. Every 4 seconds one MiniDisc is ensure high flexibility necessary for the factory of the
disassembled by this system. future. The planning and development process of
such cells is a time-consuming process today.
Therefore a computer aided planning system as an
6. CONCLUSIONS efficient tool for reducing the planning time -
DEROBPLAN - is under development. The system
Disassembly automation especially for electr(on)ic supports the planner and shortens the planning time.
devices is absolutely necessary worldwide in the
nearest future because of the dramatically increasing
amount of electr(on)ic scrap. REFERENCES
Today only some pilot projects in form of fully Gschwendtner G., P. Kopacek (1995). Design for
automated single purpose solutions - and only for Disassembly. In: Preprints of the 4th Intern.
one distinct type of one product - are realized. Main Workshop Robotics in Alpe-Adria Region,
problem is the collection and transportation of a RAA "95, PSrtschach, Vol.l, p. 79-82.
sufficient amount of these products to one place in
one area. Gschwendtner G., A. Frotsclmig, P. Kopacek (1995).
Concurrent Engineering for Disassembling. In:
Therefore it is necessary to disassemble more than Proceedings of the 8th Symposium on Information
one product in an automated or semi-automated cell. Control Problems in Manufacturing, Beijing,
For this purpose products with similar disassembly p.79-84.
operations are collected in ,,disassembly families" - Kopacek P., G. Kronreif (1996). Robplan: Semiauto-
families which are disassembled in modular cells, matic planning of robotized assembly cells. In:
developed by means of computer aided planning
Proceedings of the 27th International ~ymposium
systems. on Industrial Robots, Milan, p. 385-390.
This offers - especially for SME's - two possibilities:
• They can be involved in the production of