JP2858186B2 - Auto body assembly equipment - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an automobile body assembling apparatus for assembling an automobile body by welding it with a robot provided at a welding station.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Spot welding robots or MIG welding robots are provided at a plurality of welding stations provided along a vehicle body assembly line of an automobile, and the vehicle bodies are welded by these robots. Spot welding is used for welding near the opening of a vehicle body where the electrodes can be brought into contact with each other because the overlapped metal plates are pressed by a pair of electrodes from both sides. On the other hand, in MIG welding, welding is performed by approaching a welding torch to a welding hole formed in one of the superposed metal plates, so that it can be used not only for welding in the vicinity of an opening of a vehicle body but also for welding of any part. It is used for welding parts where spot welding cannot be used.

[0003]

Conventionally, the spot welding robot and the MIG welding robot are not provided at the same welding station, but are provided at separate welding stations for the following reasons. That is, while the position of the spot in spot welding has a relatively large tolerance, in the case of MIG welding, the welding torch needs to approach the welding hole formed in one side of the metal plate correctly, so that an extremely small error is caused. Only allowed. For example, as shown in FIGS. 6A to 6C, when the welding torch is shifted from the welding hole in the lateral direction, when the distance between the welding torch and the welding hole is excessive, when the distance between the welding torch and the welding hole is large. If the amount is too small, the welding will not be performed accurately in any case.

For this reason, spot welding robots and MIG
If the welding robot is provided in the same welding station and the welding work is performed simultaneously, the body slightly shakes when the spot welding robot presses the welding portion of the body with the electrode.
The position of the welding hole is shifted with respect to the welding torch of the IG welding robot, so that MIG welding cannot be performed accurately.

[0005] The present invention has been made in view of the above-mentioned circumstances, and in the same welding station, spot welding and M
An object of the present invention is to provide a vehicle body assembling apparatus capable of performing IG welding simultaneously.

[0006]

In order to achieve the above object, the present invention relates to an automobile body assembling apparatus for assembling an automobile body by welding it with a robot provided at a welding station. A first aspect is to provide a vehicle body positioning means for stopping at a predetermined position, a vehicle body fixing means for preventing the vibration of the positioned vehicle body, a spot welding robot, and a MIG welding robot, and simultaneously performing spot welding and MIG welding on the vehicle body. Features.

Further, the present invention provides, in addition to the first feature described above,
A second feature is that the vehicle body fixing means includes a pair of pressing members which are driven by the parallel link mechanism so as to approach and separate from each other and press the vehicle body from both right and left sides.

[0008]

Embodiments of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings.

1 to 5 show an embodiment of the present invention. FIG. 1 is an overall perspective view of a welding station, and FIG.
3 is a view in the direction of arrow 3 in FIG. 1, FIG. 4 is an enlarged perspective view of a part 4 in FIG. 1, and FIG. 5 is a sectional view taken along line 5-5 in FIG.

As shown in FIGS. 1 to 3, an automobile body B, which is an object to be welded, can be raised and lowered via an X-link mechanism 1 on a truck (not shown) of a conveyor running along a body assembly line. Is supported on a support plate 2 provided on the base plate. Support plate 2
A plurality of positioning pins 3 constituting vehicle body positioning means project upward from the upper surface of the vehicle body B. The positioning pins 3 are fitted into predetermined openings formed in the floor panel of the vehicle body B. Therefore, the conveyor truck is connected to the welding station S
, The vehicle body B is positioned at a predetermined position of the welding station S.

The welding station S is provided with a pair of left and right spot welding robots 4 and a pair of left and right MIG welding robots 5 along both sides of the vehicle body B. The spot welding robot 4 is of a polar coordinate type, and its arm 6
Is provided with a pair of electrodes 7 and 8 which can be freely opened and closed at the tip of. The spot welding robot 4 welds an upper edge and a lower edge of an opening for attaching a rear door to the vehicle body B, and a front edge of an opening for attaching a tail lamp to the vehicle body B. Is indicated by a white circle.

On the other hand, the MIG welding robot 5 is of the articulated type, and has a welding torch 10 at the tip of its arm 9. The MIG welding robot 5 welds a position behind the front wheel house on the front outside panel, and the welded portion is indicated by a black circle in FIG.

The welding station S is provided with a pair of left and right vehicle body fixing means 11 adjacent to the MIG welding robot 5. The vehicle body fixing means 11 includes a base 12 erected on the floor surface.
A parallel link mechanism 14 driven by a cylinder 13 to approach and separate from the vehicle body B is provided on the upper surface of the vehicle, and a pressing member 15 that can contact the front wheel house of the vehicle body B is provided at the tip of the parallel link mechanism 14. . Vehicle fixing means 11
Position of the body B by the MIG welding robot 5
Is set as close as possible to the MIG welded portion of the spot welding robot and as far as possible from the spot welded portion by the spot welding robot 4.

FIG. 5 illustrates the principle of MIG welding. A welding torch 10 provided in the MIG welding robot 5 is shown in FIG.
Is a nozzle 16 for supplying an inert gas for shutting off air.
A contact chip 17 disposed coaxially inside the
A welding wire 20 sandwiched between supply rollers 19 driven by a motor 18 is supplied through the center of the contact tip 17. And Thus, not previously superimposed inner panel P ₁ and the outer panel P ₂ is a welded object, the panels P
_1, a P ₂ and the contact tip 17 in a state of being connected to the negative pole and the positive pole of the high voltage power supply, to approach the welding torch 10 while supplying the welding wire 20 and inert gas to the welding hole H of the outer panel P _2. Then hot arc is generated toward the weld hole H from the welding wire 20, the interior of the welding hole H is welded to the inner panel P ₁ by welding wire 20 was melted in the heat.

Next, the operation of the embodiment of the present invention having the above configuration will be described.

When the vehicle body positioned by the positioning pins 3 of the support plate 2 provided on the carriage of the conveyor is carried into the welding station S and stopped, the cylinders of the pair of vehicle body fixing means 11 disposed on the left and right sides of the vehicle body B 13, the parallel link mechanism 14 advances from the dashed line position to the solid line position in FIG. 3, and presses and fixes the front wheel house of the vehicle body B from the left and right by the pressing member 15 provided at the tip thereof. At this time, the pair of pressing members 15 approach the vehicle body B and fix the vehicle body E from both left and right sides while maintaining the horizontal posture by the action of the parallel link mechanism 14, so that no extra load is applied to the vehicle body B. .

When the vehicle body B is positioned by the positioning pins 3 and the vehicle body B is fixed by the vehicle body fixing means 11 as described above, a pair of spot welding robots 4 are indicated by white circles in FIG. The spots are sequentially spot-welded, and a pair of MIG
The welding robot 5 sequentially performs MIG welding on the portions indicated by the black circles in FIG. 2 according to the teaching procedure.

At this time, since the vehicle body B is firmly fixed from both left and right sides by the pair of pressing members 15 of the vehicle body fixing means 11, the vehicle body B swings even if the spot welding robot 4 presses the welding portion with its electrodes. Is prevented. Moreover,
Since the distance between the spot welding part and the clamp part by the vehicle body fixing means 11 is longer than the distance between the MIG welding part and the clamp part by the vehicle body fixing means 11, the deflection of the vehicle body B by the spot welding robot 4 is MIG welding robot. 5 has almost no effect. Accordingly, the welding torch 10 of the MIG welding robot 5 can face the welding hole H of the vehicle body while maintaining a correct position, angle, and distance, and can perform accurate MIG welding.

Thus, the spot welding and the MIG welding can be performed simultaneously at the common welding station S, so that the working time and the working space can be reduced at the same time.

Although the embodiment of the present invention has been described in detail above, the present invention is not limited to the above embodiment, and various small design changes can be made.

[0021]

As described above, according to the first feature of the present invention, the welding station is provided with the vehicle body positioning means for stopping the vehicle body at a predetermined position and the vehicle body fixing means for preventing the positioned vehicle body from swinging. Therefore, deflection of the vehicle body due to spot welding is prevented, and thereby MIG welding can be performed in parallel with spot welding. As a result, the spot welding and the MIG welding can be performed simultaneously at the common welding station, so that the working time and the working space can be reduced at the same time.

According to the second feature of the present invention, since the vehicle body fixing means includes a pair of pressing members for pressing the vehicle body from both right and left sides by the parallel link mechanism, no extra load is applied to the vehicle body. The vehicle body can be securely and firmly fixed.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is an overall perspective view of a welding station.

FIG. 2 is a view in the direction of arrows in FIG. 1;

FIG. 3 is a view in the direction of arrows in FIG. 1;

FIG. 4 is an enlarged perspective view of four parts of FIG. 1;

FIG. 5 is a sectional view taken along line 5-5 of FIG. 4;

FIG. 6 is an explanatory diagram of the operation of MIG welding.

[Explanation of symbols]

 3 positioning pin (body positioning means) 4 spot welding robot 5 MIG welding robot 11 vehicle body fixing means 14 parallel link mechanism 15 pressing member B vehicle body S welding station

Continuation of the front page (58) Field surveyed (Int. Cl. ⁶ , DB name) B23K 37/04 B23K 9/00 501 B23K 11/11 570 B62D 65/00

Claims (2)

(57) [Claims] An automobile body assembling apparatus for assembling a vehicle body (B) by welding with a robot (4, 5) provided at a welding station (S), wherein the welding station (S) includes a vehicle body (B). Vehicle body positioning means (3) for stopping the vehicle at a predetermined position, vehicle body fixing means (11) for preventing the vibration of the positioned vehicle body (B),
An automobile body assembling apparatus comprising a spot welding robot (4) and a MIG welding robot (5), wherein spot welding and MIG welding are simultaneously performed on the body (B). 2. A pair of pressing members (15), which are driven by the parallel link mechanism (14) to approach and separate from each other and press the vehicle body (B) from both left and right sides. The vehicle body assembling apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising: