Research On Control System Design And Virtual Debugging Of Large Gantry Frame Welding Robot

With China’s "Industry 4.0" strategy gradually advancing,the rapid development of automatic welding technology in recent years has provided an extremely solid foundation for the manufacturing industry to develop towards automation and intelligence by virtue of its powerful capabilities.Due to the limited processing range of ordinary welding robots,it is difficult to process large mechanical parts such as construction machinery,automotive chassis and heavy-duty dump truck buckets,making large gantry welding robots an indispensable and important welding process equipment.Siemens MCD(Mechatronics Concept Design)is a cutting-edge mechatronics concept design system that supports the joint design and simulation of mechanical,electrical and automation disciplines,and is an emerging product in the context of Industry 4.0.The MCD platform enables an integrated engineering approach,reducing the development cycle time caused by interdisciplinary integration problems in the later stages of design,and the physical field-based 3D simulation it provides provides a virtual commissioning method for the automated commissioning phase in the later stages of equipment development.The project is based on PLC and MCD technology.This project is based on PLC and MCD technology to develop a large gantry welding robot digital equipment,and to carry out virtual commissioning.The main research elements of this paper are as follows.First,the digital model of the large gantry welding robot is designed according to the functional requirements and the integrated control and communication scheme of the large gantry welding robot system is determined.The techniques and methods for the integrated control of the three-axis gantry system are investigated in terms of both the motion model and the control logic of the system.Secondly,the hardware configuration was carried out in the Siemens Protherm(TIA Portal)environment and the control of the large gantry welding robot in the X,Y and Z directions of motion was realised with a PLC,a programmable logic controller,using TIA instructions and ladder diagram language programming.The NX MCD is then used as a digital model creation and simulation platform,proposing the use of XML technology to achieve real-time interaction between the virtual simulation model and the PLC input/output(I/O)data,and further utilising the OPC server as a communication bridge between the MCD and the PLC.The paper concludes with an MCD simulation test of the large gantry welding robot control system as well as a communication test to complete the design of the large gantry welding robot control system and virtual commissioning,the test results show that the system is feasible and reliable.