Automated Offline Programming: The Future of Robotic Manufacturing

Offline programming: Your shortcut to production-ready robot programs

Offline programming (OLP) transforms your robotic manufacturing by digitalizing and optimizing the way you generate robot programs. It enables the development of production-ready programs within a virtual simulation environment.

This not only saves up to 80 percent of process time, it also has positive effects on overall equipment effectiveness (OEE). For instance, PC-based OLP software ensures bug-free manufacturing processes and efficient attainment of production targets, even in complex task scenarios.

From offline programming to automated offline programming – an example

Automating your offline programming means leveling up because it further simplifies and accelerates the programming process. It also lets users without specialized programming skills generate and edit robot programs, and that has highly beneficial effects on production planning.

To show how offline programming and automated OLP work in practice, let’s look at two scenarios: First, we’ll watch Lauren, an industry technician, as she programs a welding process using offline programming software. Then, we’ll see how automated OLP makes her work even easier.

Offline Programming in Action: A Practical Example

Lauren, an experienced industrial technician who’s also been trained in robot programming, works for a construction machinery maker. Currently, she’s tasked with programming welding operations for a new excavator shovel. In principle, this means she has to follow five distinct steps:

1. Specification: Lauren confers with the development engineer and the production manager to determine the requirements for the excavator shovel. She receives 3D CAD models that include details on welding seams, tolerances and clamp points, plus specifications regarding seam thickness and positions as well as cycle times.
    
2. Programming: Lauren uses the OLP software installed on her PC to import 3D models and plan the robot movements. The software helps her optimize robot sequences and adjust the clamp points to achieve optimal welding positions.
    
3. Simulation: Next, Lauren relies on OLP simulation to validate and further optimize the robot program. She ensures that the robot can reach all welding positions without collisions and that the target cycle times are met with minimal air moves. She values the efficiency of the OLP software and the easy access it gives her to hard-to-reach component positions – a clear advantage over manual robot teaching.
    
4. Implementation: Via a USB stick, Lauren transfers the robot program to the production cell, uploading it to the robot control system and configuring the welding parameters. For quality assurance purposes, she relies on a spec database and her extensive experience. Since step 1, all of this has taken Lauren less than four hours.
    
5. Validation: In the last step, Lauren validates the program via a test run and then confirms that the production cell is ready to start making excavator shovels.

Thanks to digitalized robot programming, Lauren can efficiently produce programs for complex manufacturing tasks without leaving her workstation and ensure that the robot cell stays productive for the duration. Along with a simplified documentation system, the use of existing CAD data and the reuse of previously programmed solutions quickly produce optimal results.

Automated offline programming: Taking efficiency to the next level

Thanks to the digitalization of robot programming, however, we now have the means to automate various offline programming functionalities. Let’s go back to our example to see what this means for Lauren.

Lauren is now discovering how automated offline programming makes her work easier thanks to the new functions of FASTSUITE Edition 2. Here are the five steps of her new workflow:

1. Digital transfer of specifications: The OLP software not only imports all component data from the CAD program but also all other production-relevant information. In our welding robot example, these are the technical specs for welding seams and tolerances.
2. Automated programming: In FASTSUITE, Lauren has defined quality safeguards and limits for potential deviations from tolerances. On this basis, the software can now autonomously create bug-free programs because FASTSUITE Edition 2 offers a tool for automatic robot path optimization, resolving any collision and axis limit problems while observing all preset quality parameters.
    
3. Direct implementation: Lauren now guides the welding process almost exclusively from her PC. She has saved the specifications needed by the robot’s welding tool to FASTSUITE. During programming, the software reconciles the tool specs with the engineers’ welding seam specs and automatically transfers the parameters of the welding process to the programmed robot path.
4. Faster validation: Automated OLP gives Lauren all she needs to virtually test the production process. Robot movements including tool orientation, component positioning and signal-controlled actuators, clamping jigs – everything is right there in the simulation.
    
5. Automated documentation: Now Lauren extracts the simulation into a neutral format like 3D PDF or USD. This documentation contains information on what welding seams were programmed based on what welding parameters and in which sequence. Manual collation of this information is a thing of the past.

How you profit: The benefits of automated Offline Programming

The efficiency boost that Lauren’s company has gained demonstrates how automated OLP can help improve manufacturing processes, and these benefits apply to a wide range of production contexts. The entire process—from design to the final robot program—is digitized, with many tasks automated along the way.

Here are the most important benefits – your business can profit from them too.

Mike meets automated OLP

The final stage of our example scenario illustrates the relevance of resource efficiency and flexible staff deployment. While Lauren is unexpectedly away at a demo event, the company receives a request for a new variant of the excavator shovel. Mike, a machine operator with FASTSUITE training and some basic knowledge of robotics, will have to fill in for her.

Thanks to the intuitive FASTSUITE user interface and the quality guiderails defined by Lauren, Mike can import the CAD model of the new excavator shovel and automatically transfer the programming of the previous variant to the new one.

Mike makes a few minor changes to the process settings and uses the optimization functions of the software to ensure maximum quality. Following successful validation within the real robot cell, he can trigger production of the new shovel variant.

The two scenarios from the production environment of a construction equipment manufacturer illustrate how automated offline programming not only reduces programming effort but also enhances workforce flexibility. Companies that adopt this technology early not only improve efficiency but also lay the foundation for a future-proof and adaptable production process.

Experience offline programming in action!

In our webinar, we demonstrate how offline programming digitally connects and optimizes your manufacturing processes.

Discover how one of the world's largest construction equipment manufacturers doubled the efficiency of programming robotic welding systems.