Use Cases | Introducing cobots for the first time? The "loading and unloading" station is recommended

background

Founded in 1991, the user company is an electronic equipment processing plant with complete technology research and development and manufacturing capabilities, and the end users are all over the United States, Europe, Japan and South Korea and well-known domestic home appliance enterprises. As a professional OME factory, customers OEM for many well-known brands, including white goods, small appliances and smart devices. Since entering the automotive electronics industry in 2008, it has further provided products including sensors, variable frequency drives and on-board power supplies for mainstream manufacturers in the industry. As an established foundry, the customer places a high value on product consistency and delivery commitment. In recent years, with the expansion of business scope and the impact of large quantities and varieties in the terminal market, factories have increasingly felt the pressure of personnel management from the production side - in addition to the gradual disappearance of the demographic dividend advantage, in some jobs that require a single action and simple and boring positions, labor difficulties have always been a headache.

pain point

The customer was located in an open factory in South China, which was labor-intensive, and the products went through multiple processes, requiring frequent loading and unloading as they flowed between stations. For some established factories, the production line used to use manual material transfer, but now this type of station is the most "unpopular" - for employers, the waiting time when picking up materials is undoubtedly a waste of manpower; For workers, this type of work is boring, requiring frequent turning and moving, and it can also cause physical fatigue. The customer initially considered replacing manual labor with traditional industrial robots for loading and unloading, which meant that a safety fence had to be installed at this location. Obviously, the customer could not accept to find another place for the robot in such a small space, and was not willing to easily change the existing production line layout. As a result, they turned their attention to cobots, which are best suited for these scenarios.

solution

After discussion with the integrator, the customer chose the ELITE EC66 collaborative robot, with a load of 6kg, a working radius of 914mm, and a repeat positioning accuracy of ±0.03mm. With the vacuum suction cup, the robot sucks up 3 circuit boards at a time according to the beat of the conveyor belt, moves to the blanking position, and unloads the materials one by one in the tray tray. Once the tray is full, a worker on the other side of the line labels the circuit board and pushes the tray to the next station – a shared work area between man and machine, without the need for a safety fence, which the cobot does.

In addition, the advantages of the cobot's compact structure are fully demonstrated in this application. The robotic arm only needs to sit on one side of the production line, and after taking the material, it travels 180 degrees to unload, and the whole set of actions is effortless, just imagine that if you change to manual, you will inevitably need to turn around frequently within up to 8 hours of working time, and the resulting emotional labor and fatigue will bring potential risks. The cobot cops with all this, with 6 joints supporting ± 360° rotation and almost working in a spherical space with no dead ends!

What's even more surprising to the customer is that the unique drag and drop teaching and interactive programming of the teach pendant of the cobot make the robot deployment very easy, and the whole set of actions is debugged in only one day.

"The first time we tried it, we were very satisfied with the ELITE cobot! The automation was easier than we thought, which gave us more confidence to try other tasks with cobots. "The good experience of the user for the first time dispelled doubts about the cobot's competence. It's really not that hard to take a big step forward in automation!

Use Cases | Introducing cobots for the first time? The "loading and unloading" station is recommended

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