在Covid-19大流行期间，医疗保健行业面临大规模的个人防护设备（PPE）短缺，这使前线工人处于感染的危险中。看到这场斗争，总部位于安大略省的集成商和工具构建器港口技术pivoted their business to include a new title — PPE manufacturer. Harbour Technologies designed a robotic cell to swiftly manufacture FDA-approved isolation gowns … in turn helping the Canadian government provide more PPE to hospitals across the country. Now because of their success, Harbour Technologies is setting their sights on providing PPE to the rest of the world.
“It’s tremendously important for Canada to have resilience in manufacturing PPE,” says Harbour Technologies co-owner Andrew Glover. “We saw it firsthand at the beginning of the pandemic, when there was a shortage of PPE across North America … especially in Canada.”
Ensuring top quality with automated operations
Level-3 isolation gowns — those used by hospital staff during patient encounters involving blood draws, inserting intravenous lines, emergency and trauma treatment, and surgery — must meet extremely high FDA approval standards. The FDA demands that all areas of the surgical isolation gown except bindings, cuffs, and hems provide the highest liquid barrier protection level for which the gown is rated … necessitating tight quality control during gown manufacture.
“We found a lot of PPE was substandard and put frontline workers at risk,” says Glover. In contrast, automated gown production yields quality far superior to anything made manually, adds Harbour Technologies co-owner Andrew Glover.
Harbor Technologies的基于川崎机器人的解决方案包括安装RS050N机器人，该机器人在PPE制造单元格中完成多个任务。机器人使用改变工具的站点在超声波焊接，刀和握把工具之间交替。这是一个可扩展的解决方案，很快将在加拿大两个港口技术地点之间扩展到14个单元。
For Harbour Technologies, building an intuitive, easy-to-use system was also important — so their employees could operate the system freely. “We wanted to make sure that when an operator starts the machine, it does what it needs to do,” explains David Glover — so anyone can grab the pendant and start operating.
有关机器人操作的更多详细信息
机器人细胞的工作原理：大量的礼服材料被加载到细胞中。伺服控制的滚筒释放生产一件礼服所需的材料量……可以随时调整它们以容纳不同的产品。
一旦桌面工作空间被材料覆盖，川崎机器人机器人将转到一个换工具的站，以戴上由Harbor Technologies设计的旋转超声焊接号。使用此工具，机器人可以将礼服轮廓跟踪，以将材料的前后块粘合在一起。接下来，机器人将刀具交换为刀具，并跟踪相同的路径，以切开密封的礼服，脖子领带和腰带。然后，机器人戴上抓手来抓住完整的礼服，并将其放在一边进行包装。Harbor Technologies员工手动打包礼服以进行分发。
The ultrasonic welding horn end effector on the Kawasaki Robotics in this photo was designed by Harbour Technologies.
根据安德鲁·格洛弗（Andrew Glover）的说法，在机器人系统中制作礼服的好处 - 包括节省劳动力和周期时间……因为他的公司可以生产比手动制作的礼服要快得多。
“We teamed up with Kawasaki Robotics, which perfectly filled the need with their robots and continuous support,” says Harbour Technologies co-owner David Glover. “We sat with their engineering team, gave them the requirements, and worked together to select the proper robot and platform.”
Harbor Technologies使用川崎RS050N机器人（具有50公斤的有效载荷和2,100毫米范围），以满足其PPE礼服申请的复杂性。在将自己的第三个也是最后一个抓地力的效果器安装在一起之后，机器人抓住了完整的PPE礼服，并将其放在一边。
Automating gown production provides other advantages. The automated cell enables significantly increased production while boosting product quality. Plus, this cell broadens Harbour Technologies’ business to become a global competitor in this space. What’s more, the company’s growth with robotic PPE manufacturing has created hundreds of jobs in their community.
“加拿大从来没有PPE制造业。使用机器人系统，它使我们能够在全球竞争，因此在本地创造了从未有过的工作。”安德鲁·格洛弗（Andrew Glover）说。“在整个安大略省，我们的作品雇用了600多名员工，这是大流行之前从未有过的东西。机器人技术使我们能够继续在这个市场上创造就业机会并发展。”
川崎Robotics USA Inc. |kawasakirobotics.com
You may also like:
Filed Under:Hack the Crisis: Engineering through COVID-19,机器人•机器人触手• end effectors
