Robotics and Computer–Integrated Manufacturing 52 (2018) 92–99

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Robotics and Computer–Integrated Manufacturing

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/rcim

Flexible punching system using industrial robots for automotive panels

Guotao Yin a, Zhenghe Zhu a, Hu Gong a,∗, Zhenfeng Lu b, Huashan Yong b, Lei Liu c, Wei He c
a
State Key Laboratory of Precision Measuring Technology & Instruments, Tianjin University, 300072, PR China
b
Tianjin Jiupeng Automobile Equipment Manufacturing Co. Ltd, Tianjin 300399, PR China
c
Mianyang Huarui Automobile Co. Ltd, Sichuan 621000, PR China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Keywords: A new flexible punching system based on industrial robots is proposed for tailor-made automotive panel. A robot
Automotive panel end effector for industrial robot punching - punching plier is designed. Meanwhile, according to the shape feature
Flexible punching of the punching plier, the interactive tool path generation method is proposed in 2D space instead of 3D space.
Industrial robots
This system can be adjusted easily to punch all kinds of holes, reducing the cost of developing new cars and
shortening the development cycle. Finally, the practicability of this system is verified through application in real
production of automotive panels.
© 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
With the popularity of family cars, the trend that consumers prefer
their own tailor-made cars becomes obvious, which brings a tremendous
market impact on the monotony products under scale production. Based
on provided original models by the manufacturers, consumers can freely
select alternative configuration according to their own needs and prefer-
ences, such as color, interior, skylight, audio and so on [1]. Customized
car products often mean that the different interiors are installed at po-
sitions specified by customers. This leads to the varying location and
variety of sizes and shapes of hole-making on the automobile panels.
Traditionally, the special press die of the automotive panels for mass
production is very expensive. So, it is not suitable for the punching of
customized car products. It is necessary to find a flexible and inexpen-
sive method of making customized holes on automotive panels. In this
context, the modular punching technology using punching unit is used,
as shown in Fig. 1. It is that several punching units assembled by the
plates at particular location are positioned together to punch hole. The
location of the punching unit can be readjusted to adapt to different
automotive panels, which brings this method with good versatility and
adaptability. However, the location of the punching unit requires posi-
tioning manually, resulting in a poor positioning accuracy. If the punch-
ing units are closely positioned, they will interfere during the installa-
tion. That means the modular punching technology is not suitable for
the punching of closely spaced holes. In addition, it is difficult to adjust
the punching unit in the 3D space position flexibly, just suitable for flat
punching, so it is not applicable to punch on the automotive panels in
the 3D space. Due to good flexibility and low cost, industrial robots have
been widely used in manufacturing fields in recent years [2]. For flexible
making holes using industrial robots, most papers focus on drilling [3–
5] using twist drill in aircraft manufacturing or medical surgery fields.
However, the robotic drilling system is not suitable for making holes on
automotive panels. Drilling is easy to generate burrs and edges on both
sides of the position of holes on the automotive panels, which is not
conducive to the installation of the car-interior, affecting the assembly
accuracy. Additionally, because the presser foot unit and the drill bit in
the drilling system both apply certain pressure to the automobile panel,
coupled with the reason that the panel is generally a sheet of 0.5–1 mm,
it is easy to deform during drilling, thus damaging the appearance of
the panel. Based on the analysis above, by using punching technology
and the industrial robot with good flexibility, a flexible robot punching
system will be proposed for tailor-made automotive panels in this study.
The flexible robot punching system extends the application of the
robot in automobile industry, especially, provides a new choice for
punching thin-wall part and greatly reduces the time of adjustment for
different parts or shape features. Gas-liquid supercharging technology
[6] is adopted to improve the motion response characteristics, and the
disadvantages of the traditional two-stroke-cycle stamping system are
overcome. A developed punching plier mounted on the robot tool flange
as the end-effector, whose core is the gas-liquid cylinder, synthesizes
advantages of both the pneumatic cylinder and the hydraulic cylinder.
The pneumatic cylinder provides fast drive; the hydraulic cylinder pro-
vides high punching pressure. In addition, compared with twist drill and
milling cutter, punching plier is a complex 3D surface instead of a sur-
face of revolution. Therefore, it is impossible to generate tool path using
current methods for cutter with surfaces of revolution due to serious col-
lision problem. In order to solve this problem, an interactive tool path

∗
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: gonghu@tju.edu.cn (H. Gong).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rcim.2017.11.002
Received 1 June 2017; Received in revised form 2 September 2017; Accepted 4 November 2017
Available online 20 November 2017
0736-5845/© 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
G. Yin et al.
Fig. 1. The modular punching technology using punching units.
Fig. 2. Plane layout of the flexible punching workstation based on industrial robot 1.
Robot 2. Punching pliers 3. Rotary table 4. Security fence 5. Safety door 6. PLC control
cabinet 7. Robot control cabinet 8. Display screen 9. Button box 10. Safety grating 11.
Workers.
generation method is proposed based on Siemens UG NX 10, according
to the shape feature of punching plier.
2. Flexible punching system
2.1. General introduction of the flexible punching workstation
The flexible punching system using industrial robots for automotive
panels is composed of industrial robot, punching pliers, high precision
rotary table, protective device and control system (including PLC con-
trol cabinet, button box, and display screen). Plane and 3D layout are
shown in Figs. 2 and 3. In the processing, two or four workpieces (au-
tomotive panels of compact cars and the SUV) can be fixed on the high
precision rotary table with the pneumatic clamps, which can achieve
the high repeat-positioning accuracy(±0.02 mm) of the workbench with
the help of the pneumatic locating pins. ABB IRB-6700 industrial robot
is adopted.
Fig. 4 shows the diagram of control system. PLC control cabinet is
the control core for the whole system. Mitsubishi PLC links to all the de-
vices in different ways to open and close them as needed. The punching
pliers, high precision rotary table, protective device and button box are
linked to the digital input and output modules. Meanwhile, the display
screen is linked to the PLC by RS232 bus. Good man-machine interface
makes it convenient to set or display the parameters, which is based
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Robotics and Computer–Integrated Manufacturing 52 (2018) 92–99
on the SIMATIC PANEL touch screen of SIEMENS Company, as shown
in Fig. 5. We can set up the system running mode on the home page,
as shown in Fig. 5(a), such as automatic operation, manual operation,
single piece automatic mode and inching operation. Users can choose
the different modes according to the actual situation and monitor the
state of running system. For example, in the automatic mode, the screen
can display the robot position, the real-time kind of workpiece being
punched, rotary table real-time position and punching count, as shown
in Fig. 5(b). It also can set counter of the waste collection box. When the
counter reaches the limit, the waste collection box will be cleared. At
the same time, the interface can also check system information, such as
I/O information, alarm information, robot information and production
statistics, in order to make the equipment maintenance and production
planning easy. Users can view or modify the information, according to
the different user permissions. PLC control cabinet communicates with
the robot control cabinet by CC-LINK Field-bus in the system, which can
save system wiring, and make maintenance and debugging easy.
2.2. The design of punching plier for industrial robot
It is easy to imagine that the punching plier should include four ma-
jor parts: Stamping die, actuator, guideway and bracket. Actuator pro-
vides power to drive stamping die along the guideway. One option for
actuator is to use servo-motor. It is gaining more attention in both in-
dustrial and household appliance manufactures because of its high effi-
ciency, high power density, high torque, low inertia, less noise, compact
form, salient operation and reliability [7]. But it need position feedback
to control the punching position, otherwise, punching sooner or too late
will contribute to the vibration of the punching plier, which may reduce
the life of the stamping die, easily cause the overload of the motor and
can’t guarantee the processing quality. So position sensor should be in-
tegrated into this system. But adding position feedback will increase the
cost and makes it more complex, which is not convenient for equipment
maintenance. The other option for actuator is the pneumatic cylinder or
the hydraulic cylinder. While, the former is convenient to get the power
source and has a low cost, but it has a poor stability of the working
speed because of the compressibility of the air, a bigger volume and a
lower working pressure. The latter can achieve a high working pressure
with a small volume and a high rigidity [8], but it has a high cost of the
installation and maintenance and has the trouble of the rise of the oil’s
temperature, which may cause the leakage of hydraulic oil due to the
thermal deformation of the seals. In this study, a gas-liquid actuator is
adopted, which synthesizes advantages of both the pneumatic cylinder
and the hydraulic cylinder, as shown in Fig. 6.
The gas-liquid pressure cylinder is an actuator which can change the
smaller input pressure into the bigger output pressure. It uses the ratio
of piston area to piston rod area, which is also the pressure ratio. The
principle is that the pressure will rise with the pressure area decreasing
when the pressure force is changeless. So it can realize the effect that the
output pressure will increase the number of times. The simulation results
using AMESim software showed that, the moving speed and the output
force of the gas-liquid pressure cylinder can meet the requirement of
die-punching press. [9]
Fast forward stroke and gas-liquid conversion function are added for
this punching system and a three-punching-stroke system is designed in-
stead of the traditional two-punching-stroke system. The working prin-
ciple is shown in Fig. 7. In detail, it includes:
2.2.1. Fast forward stroke
The main control valve works and the air enters into the cavity B
through the port P2. The hydraulic fluid flows into cavity C and the
air exhausts from the port P1. Finally, working piston 2 pneumatically
drives the terrace die to move fast and softly until approaching the sur-
face of workpiece.
G. Yin et al. Robotics and Computer–Integrated Manufacturing 52 (2018) 92–99

Fig. 3. 3D layout of the flexible punching workstation based on industrial robot.

PLC Button Box

Control Cabinet

CC-LINK Field-Bus
RS232 Bus

ABB Robot
Control Cabinet Display Screen

Punching Plier

ABB Robot Body Rotary Table

Fig. 4. The diagram of control system.

2.2.2. Punching stroke
When the terrace die approaching the surface of workpiece, the ex-
ternal resistance will open the change-over valve autonomously. The air
enters into the cavity A through the port P4 and the air exhausts from
the port P3. Then, working piston 1 pneumatically moves downwards
and encloses the oil cavity which is marked as the red area in Fig. 7(b).
The oil pressure will rise rapidly with the working piston 1 continuing
to move downwards, which will make the working piston 2 move pow-
erfully. So, gas-liquid pressurized cylinder will switch the power from
air pressure drive to hydraulic drive automatically via the change-over
valve. Then, the terrace die will punch in full force.
2.2.3. Return stroke
After the completion of punching stroke, the air enters into the cavity
A and C through the port P3 and P1. Meanwhile, the air exhausts from
the port P2 and P4, so the working piston 1 and working piston 2 with
the terrace die will return to the original position of the static state and
prepare for the next work cycle.
Adding fast forward stroke and gas-liquid conversion function,
the punching plier realizes the “soft approaching technology” and
“Force Adaptation Techniques” compared with the previous two-stroke-
punching device. “Soft approaching technology” applied in fast forward
stroke means that the terrace die moves fast and softly until approach-
ing the surface of workpiece pneumatically. The contact force is small,
which is about 1%–5% of rated punching force. So the punching process
has no impact vibration and has low noise, which not only improves the
punching quality greatly, but also prolongs the life of the die greatly.
“Force Adaptation Techniques” means that power will turn to hydraulic
drive from air pressure drive automatically when the terrace die touches
the surface of workpiece at any moment in the fast forward stroke. So

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G. Yin et al. Robotics and Computer–Integrated Manufacturing 52 (2018) 92–99

Automatic operation I/O information

Manual operation Alarm information

Single piece
Robot information
automatic mode

Inching operation Production statistics

System settings Back to home page

(a) The home interface

Robot position

The kind of workpiece

being punched
Rotary table position

Punching count Clear count

Counter of the Clear box
waste collection confirmation
box

Back to home page

(b) The automatic mode interface

(c) The real automatic mode interface

Fig. 5. Man-machine interface.

the gas-liquid pressurized cylinder can switch the power without chang-
ing the device, which contributes to lowering the high reject rate.
2.3. Tool path generation
Before working, an interference-free punching tool path should be
generated. Generally, for traditional tool path generation of milling, it
is enough to represent the position and posture of tools with a point on
the tool axis and a tool axis direction because these tools can be looked
as surfaces of revolution [10–13]. Without loss of generality, let’s take
5-axis milling for example, as shown in Fig. 8(a), the milling cutter can
retract along the tool axis direction to avoid interference. Usually, C-
space approach was used to generate interference-free tool path auto-
matically [14,15]. But for punching plier, as shown in Fig. 8(b), it is
difficult to generate interference-free tool path automatically due to its
complexity of shape. Obviously, compared with tool path generation of

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G. Yin et al. Robotics and Computer–Integrated Manufacturing 52 (2018) 92–99

Connector is necessary to develop new method to generate tool path for flexible
punching.
The basic idea of tool path generation for punching a hole is shown
in Figs. 9 and 10. To simplify the calculation, the work plane is defined,
Stamping die
which passes through the axis of a hole to punch. The symmetry plane
of punching plier coincides with the work plane. Let the punching plier
move within the work plane and get the tool path. Obviously, the tool
path in 3D space is simplified into 2D space. The interference should
be checked in 3D space. If interference happens, the work plane should
be reselected. Therefore, the detailed calculation can be described as
Actuator
follows. A moving frame 𝜉 (𝑡) = [𝛒(𝑡) ; 𝐞(1𝑡) , 𝐞(2𝑡) , 𝐞(3𝑡) ] is used to represent the
Guideway positions and postures of the punching plier. 𝛒(𝑡) denotes the position
Bracket
vector. 𝐞(1𝑡) is unit vector and parallel to the axis of stamp die. 𝐞(2𝑡) is unit
vector and parallel to the side plane of bracket. 𝐞(3𝑡) is vertical to 𝐞(1𝑡) and
Fig. 6. The 3D design of punching plier.
𝐞(2𝑡) . 𝜉 (h) = [𝛒(ℎ) ; 𝐞(1ℎ) , 𝐞(2ℎ) , 𝐞(3ℎ) ] denotes the position and direction of the
hole to punch, 𝐞(1ℎ) denotes the direction of the hole axis, 𝐞(1ℎ) and 𝐞(2ℎ)
5-axis milling, the major problem is to avoid interference. Therefore, determine the work plane. As shown in Fig. 8, to simplify the calcula-
current tool path generation methods will fail in this situation and it tion, let 𝐞(t)
1
= 𝐞(1ℎ) , 𝐞(t)
2
= −𝐞(2ℎ) during the process of tool path generation.

3 3
Change-over Change-over
Valve Valve
$ Compressed Air $ Compressed Air
3 3 3 3

Working % Working
%
piston 1 piston 1
Air Filter Air Filter

Working Working &

piston 2 & piston 2
3 Main control Main control
Valve 3 Valve

Workpiece Workpiece
Exhaust state Compressed air Exhaust state Compressed air

Hydraulic fluid Hydraulic fluid Hydraulic fluid Hydraulic fluid

in normal state in high pressure in normal state in high pressure

(a) Fast forward stroke (b) Punching stroke

3
Change-over
Valve
Compressed Air
$
3 3

Working %
piston 1
Air Filter

Working
piston 2
& Main control
3 Valve

Workpiece
Exhaust state Compressed air

Hydraulic fluid Hydraulic fluid

in normal state in high pressure

(c) Return stroke

Fig. 7. The working principle of gas-liquid actuator.

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G. Yin et al. Robotics and Computer–Integrated Manufacturing 52 (2018) 92–99

Retract
Milling cutter Retract with interference
without
interference

Workpiece

Retract
without
interference
Workpiece

(a) 5-axis Milling (b) Flexible punching

Fig. 8. The problem of tool path generation for flexible punching.

Get 2D interference-
Determine work Check interference in No Output the tool path
free tool path within Interference˛
plane 3D space of punching a hole
work plane

Yes

Fig. 9. The basic idea of tool path generation for punching a hole.

Work plane

e1(h )
The hole to
punch
e2(h )
Punching plier e1( t )
e3(h )
e3( t )
e2( t )

Tool path

Fig. 10. The calculation of the tool path.

Therefore, if 𝛒(𝑡) is calculated, the tool position can be achieved. Since
𝛒(𝑡) is within the work plane, it can be expressed as
𝛒(𝑡) = 𝛒(ℎ) + x𝐞(1ℎ) + y𝐞(2ℎ)
Since 𝜉 (h) = [𝛒(ℎ) ; 𝐞(1ℎ) , 𝐞(2ℎ) , 𝐞(3ℎ) ] is known for a given part, a series of
tool positions and postures of punching plier can be described as [𝛒(ℎ) +
x𝑖 𝐞(1ℎ) + y𝑖 𝐞(2ℎ) ; 𝐞(1ℎ) , −𝐞(2ℎ) , −𝐞(h)
3
].
The proposed method is realized based on program developing tools
of Siemens UG NX 10. UG NX has a powerful CAD design function
and secondary development tools, such as UG /Open GRIP,UG /Open
API, UG /Open MenuScript and UG /Open UIStyler. In this study, a
robot off-line programming software has been developed by using Mi-
crosoft VS2010 program tools and UG /Open API. According to the ac-
tual requirement of the robot punching process, the robot off-line pro-
gramming software mainly includes the following several key modules:
user interface and the menu, tool path generation, the robot inverse
kinematic solution, motion simulation and interference check and post-
processing. Drop-down menus and toolbars can be created by UG /Open
MenuScript with the UG style, which is programmed by scripting lan-
guage. UG /Open UIStyler can help users to set up the user interface to
realize the interactive operation with the UG data models. In the path
planning, UF_MODEL function library is used to create and obtain co-
ordinates, points, lines and planes, which contributes to realizing the
interactive tool path generation method of punching pliers. The motion
simulation module verifies whether the tool path is correct by establish-
ing the robot kinematics simulation model. The model is made up of
7 links and 6 revolute pairs and the drive function is generated by the
robot inverse calculation result, which is based on the UF_MOTION func-
tion library. The interference check module calls the interference check
function of the UG itself using UF_CLRAR function library. A typical case
is shown in Fig. 11. Finally, according to the programming language of

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G. Yin et al.
Fig. 11. The simulation of a tool path for punching a hole within the work plane.
ABB robot (RAPID), a post-processing program is written using C++ to
generate robot processing program.
2.4. Application
The flexible punching system using industrial robots for automobile
panels is realized and successfully used in Mianyang Huarui Automo-
bile Co. Ltd, as shown in Fig. 12 and video in supplementary materials.
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Robotics and Computer–Integrated Manufacturing 52 (2018) 92–99
According to practical punching process, the flexible robot punching
system can meet the punching requirements in efficiency and the cost.
Meanwhile, the system can adapt to different models of car with simple
upgrading and reprogramming, but the traditional method with punch-
ing dies can be only applied to one model of car. As we can see the
comparison of different punching process in adjustment time and ad-
justment cost from the Table 1, large punching machine has the longest
adjustment time and highest adjustment cost (mainly the die cost) and
G. Yin et al.
Table 1
Comparison of four punching processes.
Punching process
Large punching machine
Modular punching technology using punching unit
Robot punching (Teaching-programming)
Robot punching (Off-line programming)
Fig. 12. The punching plier is punching.
robot punching system with off-line programming, which uses the inter-
active tool path generation method based on Siemens UG NX 10, has the
shortest adjustment time and little adjustment cost. So, it shows that the
robot punching system with off-line programming can effectively reduce
the adjustment time and cost of new workpiece and shorten the research
cycle of new cars.
3. Conclusions
Aiming at the trend that consumers pursue their own tailor-made
cars by freely choosing the individual interiors and the fact that the
updating speed of products is faster and faster along with drastic mar-
ket competition, this paper designs and makes a flexible punching sys-
tem which combines the special punching plier and industrial robots.
The punching plier is designed for the application on the industrial
robot, which adopts “soft approaching technology” and “Force Adap-
tation Techniques”. It has the advantage of small size, strong power,
energy saving, high degree of automation and high punching quality.
Meanwhile, since full automatic tool path generation is very difficult
for punching plier due to the complexity of 3D shape, an interactive tool
path generation method is proposed in 2D space instead of 3D space by
defining work plane. Compared with the traditional modular punching
device, the robot punching system is more flexible and efficient. It can
easily adjust the punching position and type, reduce the cost of new
cars’ research and shorten the development cycle, which contributes to
realizing the mass production of personalized customization and rapid
product update.
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Robotics and Computer–Integrated Manufacturing 52 (2018) 92–99
Adjustment time Adjustment cost
15–20 days 100–200 thousand dollars
2–3 days 1–2 thousand dollars
1–2 days little
5–6 h little
Acknowledgment
The authors appreciate supports of the Funds for the National Natu-
ral Science Foundation of China (Grant nos. 51575386, and 51275344).
Supplementary materials
Supplementary material associated with this article can be found, in
the online version, at doi:10.1016/j.rcim.2017.11.002.
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