Serving Midwest manufacturers, PCC Robotics delivers turnkey collaborative robot (cobot) based systems utilizing Universal-Robots as its foundation. These systems are often commissioned in hours/days vs. weeks/months allowing the manufacturer to quickly realize the ROI, which is typically less than 200 days.
What is the #1 reason why customers invest in collaborative robots?
Common Justifications
Labor shortage causing unplanned downtime.
Replacement for human operators in dirty, dangerous, and dull operations.
Expand production capabilities with increase quality, consistency, and speed.
Lower operation costs via increased labor efficiency.
System can be easily repurposed to run multiple small or large batch jobs.
Typical Applications
Machine tending – vertical and horizontal mills, lathes, injection molding presses
Secondary operations – drilling, deburring, broaching, routing, engraving
Assembly – screw and nut driving, part fitting, sonic welding
Inspection – testing, vision inspection, measuring
Finishing – sanding, polishing
Dispensing – painting, gluing, sealing
Material Handling – packaging, palletizing, picking, kitting
Projects
Test Machine Loading
In the past a test machine was manually loaded every 6 seconds, making for tedious and repetitive work. Now a cobot is loading the machine from staging trays on an infeed conveyor, freeing up the operator to do higher value work.
Injection Molding Unload
Previously the operator was required to be at the molding machine continuously to remove finished parts. With the deployment of a cobot and accumulation conveyor, the operator only needs to attend to the machine a few minutes per hour to package finished goods.
Broach Loading
High volume, repetitive and dirty broach machine loading saw a 33% increase in throughput with collaborative robot automation. Additionally, an operator adds parts to the staging plate a few times per shift freeing them up over 90% from the previous manual operation.
Five Axis Machine Tending
Tight tolerance and challenging materials in the medical device industry drove the decision to automate. The automated loading and unloading of this five-axis vertical machining center runs unattended and lights out.
Die Cast Machining
Employment challenges motivated this die caster to automate in their machining operations. They increased throughput in this department significantly and quickly with cobots, while maintaining their existing staff.
Thread Rolling
This dual gripper setup runs continuously, loading and unloading rods into a thread rolling machine. Both ends of the rods are rolled, then finished parts are neatly stacked for further processing. Operator intervention is only needed a few times per shift. Whereas, the manual process requires constant operator attention.
Spot Welding
The system consists of an indexing conveyor to feed parts from the first operation, a cobot to pick and position parts on the spot welder, and an automatic nut feeder to place nuts on the electrode for welding. After welding two nuts, the cobot places the finished part in a jig for a final tapping operation.
Anatomy of a System
1. The Machine Base
called the ProFeeder by Easy Robotics, is a highly sturdy but portable structure designed to mount a robot arm, controller, and teach pendant.
2. The Collaborative Robot
manufactured by Universal-Robots (UR), comes in four sizes depending on payload and reach requirements. UR robots are extremely easy to program yet very powerful to handle a large variety of loading and unloading applications. The convenient pallet subprogram makes setting up a job quick and repeatable.
3. The Gripper
manufactured by OnRobot (and others), provides the critical handling of raw material and finished parts. Some applications may benefit from a dual gripper arrangement due to changing part geometry after machining, or to improve overall cycle times. Grippers are available in wide variety of styles and technologies depending on the part handling requirements and proper selection is vitally important to ensure project success.
4. The Automatic Door Controller
SIDOOR manufactured by Siemens, provides an incredibly easy after-market solution for automatically controlling the door on a machining center. This unit features one-button learning mode and built-in safety making it the perfect solution for automating legacy CNC machines.
5. Parts Staging
is where the raw material is positioned for processing. The ProFeeder provides a variety of options for staging parts directly on the base. Additionally, EasyRobotics has a number of other parts staging solutions based on a drawer concept. Parts staging is always a critical component to a successful project.
Success Stories
Rolling with the punches at WST Fab
Getting started with automation in an unpredictable world at WST Fab – Discover how PCC Robotics helped WST Fab get started with automation, including how they applied what they learned to overcome their customer’s changing needs in record time.
Justifying and Implementing Collaborative Robots
PCC Robotics hosted a roundtable discussion with some manufacturers who have completed the process of justification, design, and implementation of a collaborative robot (COBOT) based system.