Flexible Assembly Cell for Permanent Magnet Machine

Rolls-Royce Marine has acquired technology from this project necessary for robotic assembly of its products. FlexCell is an extension project from the innovation project Autoflex (NFR project no. 219296), and it is the research results from Autoflex that has been industrialized. The aim was to transfer the solutions from Autoflex to a technical platform that Rolls-Royce Marine can build on, and establish competence on automated manufacturing. In addition, a product design from Autoflex that was developed for robotic assembly has been validated. An important part of the project was to adapt and move a robot cell developed in Autoflex to a Rolls-Royce manufacturing facility and find a platform for programming that could be integrated with the existing systems in the company. Low volume and many product variants creates very specific requirements to the programming of both the robots and the automation system. The project has led to a solution for this that will be tested further in the manufacturing of Rolls-Royce Marines products. The competence gained from the project enables the company to lead this work further.

Autoflex had as its primary goal: Cost-effective manufacturing of low volume, complex and heavy products in high-cost countries using real time adaptive robot control to replace manual operations. All milestones and goals in Autoflex are now fulfilled and the project is complete. Autoflex resulted in the redesign of the permanent magnet (PM) rotor for automated assembly. A robot assembly cell was designed and demonstrated at a partner's facility. Rolls-Royce has a long-term strategy to develop a cutting edge production line forPM thrusters and wants to implement and further develop the demonstrator robotic assembly cell at Rolls-Royce Propulsion facility for PM thruster production. The aim is to demonstrate that the Autoflex concept can function in a real factory environment and build competence on automated production within the engineering and manufacturing departments. An important end result is that Rolls-Royce after the project is able to program and alter the functionality of the robot cell using only internal resources. In addition to demonstrate and develop new production concepts for PM machines, the robot cell will also be an important focus point for Rolls-Royce's research activities in manufacturing technology. It will be natural to use this facility in coming innovation projects coming out of SFI Manufacturing where Rolls-Royce is an industrial partner.