Current status of valve manufacturing industry and traditional production pain points
At present, the valve manufacturing industry presents a diversified development trend. The market demand continues to grow, not only from the demand for renewal and transformation of traditional industrial fields, but also from the rise of emerging industries such as new energy and semiconductors, which has injected new vitality into the valve market. Globally, there are a large number of valve manufacturing companies and fierce competition. In terms of technology, although some advanced companies have begun to introduce automated and intelligent production equipment, overall, a considerable proportion of companies still use traditional production methods, and production efficiency and product quality vary. In terms of products, there are many types of valves, including gate valves, stop valves, ball valves, butterfly valves, etc. Different types of valves have large differences in structure, size, and performance requirements, which puts forward higher flexibility requirements for the production and manufacturing process.
The traditional production model has the following pain points:
Low production efficiency: In traditional valve manufacturing, a large number of processes rely on manual operation, such as parts processing, assembly, and testing. Manual operation is relatively slow, and workers need to rest, and continuous and uninterrupted production cannot be achieved. For example, in the valve assembly link, it may take several hours to manually assemble a complex valve, and as the number of orders increases, the labor intensity of workers increases, and the probability of error will also increase, further affecting production efficiency. Poor quality stability: Manual operation is greatly affected by factors such as workers' skill level and working status. Different workers have differences in operation techniques and strength, which makes it difficult to ensure high consistency in product quality. Taking valve sealing surface processing as an example, it is difficult to ensure that the flatness and finish of each valve sealing surface are exactly the same during manual polishing, which affects the sealing performance of the valve and increases the defective rate of the product. High labor intensity and high labor cost: Some processes in the valve manufacturing process, such as carrying heavy valve bodies and performing repetitive manual operations for a long time, put a heavy burden on the workers' bodies. At the same time, with the continuous increase in labor costs, enterprises' expenditures on manpower continue to increase. In order to complete large-scale orders, enterprises need to hire a large number of workers, which not only increases labor costs, but also brings management difficulties. Insufficient production flexibility: When market demand changes and product models or specifications need to be adjusted, traditional production models are difficult to respond quickly. Since production equipment and processes are relatively fixed, it takes a lot of time and effort to readjust the production line, which makes enterprises slow to respond to market changes and difficult to meet customers' diverse and personalized needs.
Application of robots in valve manufacturing
Industrial robots have been widely used in the machinery manufacturing industry for nearly a decade. The development and strength of the valve industry has benefited from the application of automation equipment and robots. In addition to the common CNC machine tools and machining centers for the processing of parts, industrial robots have other applications, such as pouring molten metal into molds during high-temperature, dirty and dangerous casting processes. Traditional manual pouring is prone to poor stability of the pouring process and fluctuations in the quality of cast products due to the frequent replacement of operators and the physical limitations of operators. After using robots for pouring, the robot pouring management software can automatically control the robot to pour according to the pre-set process, and the product repeatability is consistent, which greatly improves the product quality and liberates the labor. At the same time, the robot system can be associated with the molten metal detection system in the furnace to realize real-time monitoring of the elemental composition of the molten metal, thereby ensuring that the material quality of the poured molten metal meets the requirements. Valve welding is also an extremely important application of industrial robots, which can realize continuous spot welding and seam welding, helping employees to get out of harmful, high-temperature and ozone-emitting environments. Robot-operated welding has high precision, which can greatly reduce welding defects and ensure the quality of valves, such as the aesthetics brought by the welding continuity of welded parts, the sealing of valve seats, and the strength of pressure-bearing parts. Common valve spraying, such as spraying paint, spraying plastic, spraying aluminum-magnesium alloy, spraying stainless steel powder, etc., are harmful to health. Robot spraying is very suitable for such working conditions. The industrial robot can spray the coating evenly and accurately calculate the amount of coating, thereby saving material costs; heavy, dangerous and boring machine loading and unloading is also the working area of industrial robots; the use of robots can accurately locate the position of materials and automatically transport materials, saving labor costs and reducing the risk of accidental injuries caused by boring work that makes operators distracted. Inspection robots are used in many valve factories for valve size inspection, and 3D projectors and three-coordinate equipment have provided great convenience for inspection work that is difficult to detect dimensions; in addition, the detection accuracy of the inspection robot is more accurate, and the nature of the work can be associated with machine intelligence. In terms of valve and pipeline inspection, the robot's high-precision sensors can be used to inspect defects such as surface roughness, cracks, and sand holes in locations that are inconvenient for manual inspection, and can also inspect the structure and degree of damage in the internal pipeline. For valve testing or use environments that are difficult to achieve in practice, the robot's simulation function can be used to scientifically predict the extraordinary functionality of the valve, such as high-pressure sealing, the impact of high temperature on materials, and the corrosion index of high-corrosive use.In the assembly and testing of valve products, robots for mass production and sample use are used to clean, transport, align, assemble, and automate testing before parts assembly; these processes are carried out in sequence, which is particularly suitable for some small and large-volume valves. In terms of packaging of finished valves, robots can be used for picking, weighing, sorting, packaging, packaging, labeling, and other tasks. For small and light valve products, small-shaped multi-joint robots can be selected, which are flexible in operation, easy to use, and have diverse functions; for larger and heavier valve products, focus on selecting large industrial robots with strong load capacity. There is no need to quickly transport or operate large products, but safety and reliability beyond the load-bearing capacity are required. Packaging robots have been adopted by some valve manufacturers pursuing automation, and their efficiency is significantly higher than that of manual labor. In addition, when developing new valve products, samples need to be made. For some uncertain multi-category designs, enterprises will actually encounter problems such as high fixed investment in mold opening, long production cycle when casting samples, and uncertain quality. Robot 3D printing technology is usually used to make the first sample of the valve. 3D printing technology has been gradually applied in China in recent years. It can make samples of some common materials according to demand, which not only ensures accurate size and superior aesthetics, but also can be used for actual testing, saving costs and shortening the sample making cycle, providing extremely high convenience for valve design, selection, and finalization.
Many valve companies in my country are gradually using industrial robots in the manufacturing process, such as surfacing and machining of the sealing surface of three-eccentric butterfly valves, production of large-size welded valves, high-pressure seamless steel pipe tees and valve body welding production lines, spraying epoxy resin powder on valves for water systems, spraying stainless steel powder on cast iron valve seats, spraying zinc on large industrial valves and pipeline surfaces, fluoroplastic lining production lines, the use of multi-functional 3D inspection instruments or equipment, automated processing-assembly-testing production lines, automated sorting-packaging-marking production lines, and sample preparation applications of 3D printing technology. These processes are gradually choosing robot operation and have achieved remarkable results; in addition, some companies have even realized unmanned automatic production line operations, greatly improving production efficiency and product quality.
Opportunities and challenges faced
The main components of the robot include controllers, servo motors, reducers, sensors and end effectors, which can realize the robot's motion control, environmental perception and task execution during operation. Although lightweight robots with six degrees of freedom are expensive, if the robot can complete the corresponding work, it can replace the workload of at least two workers, thereby quickly recovering the investment cost. Up to now, the use of robots in China is currently growing at a rate of 25%, which has been growing for three consecutive years, and about 40% of the world's robots are used in China. Although the start of domestic robots is similar to that of foreign countries, they stagnated in the middle, so there is some gap in manufacturing level with advanced industrial countries. In recent years, due to the production needs of enterprises, especially automobile manufacturers, half of my country's robots are used in automobile production lines, and other industrial production has gradually adopted robots, which has promoted the development of robot production. The domestic supply chain of industrial robots has basically been formed, and domestic enterprises can manufacture high-quality and low-cost industrial robot bodies that are suitable for the needs of general manufacturing. With the localization of RV reducers and the rapid rise of domestic high-end industries (such as chips, semiconductors, new energy, etc.), the network is becoming more and more advanced, and artificial intelligence is becoming more powerful. Future robots will develop in a more intelligent, networked, integrated, and customized direction. The robots with diversified functions required by high-end valve manufacturers still have a large room for research and development.
It is imperative for the valve industry to adopt robots. At the same time, robot manufacturers need to cooperate with relevant production equipment manufacturers to understand and master the principles and applications of core components of robots, combined with the actual needs of valve manufacturers, conduct secondary development, design and manufacture robots that are closer to different production; however, for special valve manufacturers, the customization of robots is also an exploration direction. The valve industry not only needs technicians who are familiar with robots, but also technical workers who regularly repair and maintain robots, and companies need to lay the groundwork in advance.
