An opportunity to strengthen efficiency in industrial automation of anthropocentric industry.
Starting an automation process in the company is a decision as complex as essential to maintain the levels of competitiveness required by the market sector, as well as to guarantee an adequate level of safety to the personnel in charge of process operations.
The choice of robotics and industrial automation is therefore subordinated to the needs of the company and its production model.
It is not really simple to define the most appropriate solution since it is a mix of transversal skills about the manufacturing process, processing technologies, robotics and industrial automation which are needed to perfectly match to ensure that the result is in line with the customer's expectations. An automation process involves important initial investments for automation and robotics themselves, for safety systems, plant programming and for the training of personnel dedicated to the automation itself.
When should you automate production with cobots?
The potential of cobots is expressed above all in their safety, flexibility and ability to store thousands of different programs, which can be reused and modified at any time, but also for their lower initial cost compared to more traditional solutions. This makes them the ideal solution to start flexible production, even where you do not have much space on the ground.
Although the investment in cobots represents a choice of wider vision in terms of flexibility, as they are a versatile equipment that can be relocated and employed for different uses over time, with no need to spend time and money to reequip them, the implementation of collaborative robotics is not always able to bring sufficient advantages to production.
In general, if the manufacturing process involves large batches with limited mix and high productivity, it is convenient to implement a more traditional automation system.
On the other hand, if our production model needs high flexibility, a large mix of products with limited volumes and great speed in switching production, then collaborative robotics becomes the most interesting option.
The lower cost of collaborative automation.
In addition to the advantages they offer in terms of flexibility, safety and ability to collaborate with humans. collaborative robots also allow to avoidadditionalcostscharacteristicoftraditionalsolutions, such as protection structures and automation start-up operations and training.
What are the most common applications for cobots?
Pick & Place, where they support efficiency and productivity, relieving the operator from manual and repetitive operations in a safe and precise way;
Visual inspections and tending machine tools, welding cells, surface finishing systems;
Assembly, with high precision in operations such as handling, inserting, screwing, hooking, joining, etc.
Packaging, palletizing and quality control at the end of the line.
Living together in the days of cobots
Cobots are built to work together with operators and to help them increase their performance.
By taking away repetitive, monotonous, dangerous and often unpleasant tasks, people will be able to focus on activities with greater added value, they get more time to acquire and apply new and greater skills.