AI-assisted Producibility Analysis

Düspohl is considered the world’s most innovative company when it comes to developing and manufacturing profile wrapping technologies, as well as surface laminating and peripheral machines for the wood and plastics industries. At Düspohl Maschinenbau GmbH, the wrapping of wooden, metal or plastic profiles by means of so-called pressure rollers takes place fully automatically and intelligently with the help of the “RoboWrap”. In the AI Marketplace, the setup process of the manufacturing plant is now to be optimised and recommendations on the feasibility of products are to be determined with the help of a digital twin.

Profile-wrapping is a process by which a decorative surface is laminated onto a substrate. The wrapping is done on a profile-wrapping machine with the help of pressure rollers. The RoboWrap system positions them fully automatically. At present, an employee still carries out the positioning
himself when first adjusting the pressure rollers to a profile geometry: he “teaches” them in. The combination that produces the optimum wrapping result is saved at the end and can be recalled at a later time. The robots then reproduce the positions of the pressure rollers automatically.

As part of the AI Marketplace, experts from Fraunhofer IEM are working together with Düspohl to complete the automation and to replace the previously unautomated “teaching in”. In addition, the feasibility of new product specifications will be able to be assessed automatically. To this end, an algorithm for extracting features is first developed, with the help of which all types of profiles at Düspohl can be examined for their properties. These characteristics are assigned to individual RoboWrap robots in the next step. For each robot, the third step is to determine with which roller geometry it can best process its assigned feature and where exactly the roller must be positioned.

With the help of a self-learning AI cycle around the digital twin of the machine, Düspohl will always receive recommendations for optimal machine settings in the future. At the same time, Düspohl’s customers receive recommendations on the manufacturability of new products and on the parameters of future coating processes. For them, this means not only process optimisation but also a further increase in efficiency. The findings from the project will be generalised for the AI Marketplace to derive an application for the platform.