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

Anatomy of a System

Machine Tending Collaborative Robot

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. 

 

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