What’s industrial automation and why it’s so essential to success in at present’s aggressive manufacturing setting? On this article we’ll reply that query by exploring among the benefits of commercial robots whereas offering sensible examples of collaborative robots –a kind of commercial automation — in motion.
What’s the that means of commercial automation?
In its broadest sense, ‘industrial automation’ refers back to the {hardware} and software program instruments and related management programs, which are used to exchange or complement human labor in industrial environments. Examples of automation sometimes present in manufacturing environments embrace conventional industrial robots, collaborative industrial robots and cellular robotic platforms.
Machines can be utilized to automate particular jobs, however they don’t provide the identical degree of versatility and suppleness as robots. Merely put, robots are extra versatile than machines. Sometimes outlined as ‘basic function manipulators that may be programmed and re-programmed to carry out all kinds of duties,’ robots may be deployed on jobs from high quality inspection and meeting to machine tending and palletizing.
Not all industrial robots are the identical, nonetheless. Conventional robots are costly, comparatively static, have a big footprint, require in depth security measures reminiscent of fencing, and programming the robotic normally requires an professional robotic engineer.
Collaborative robots (or ‘cobots’), which first got here on the scene simply over a decade in the past with the launch of Common Robots’ UR5 cobot, provide a unique paradigm: reasonably priced automation with a small footprint that’s straightforward to deploy –and redeploy—on a variety of duties. Cobots are additionally extremely cellular –they will simply be mounted on a cellular platform or lifted by dolly and moved to a unique a part of your facility as manufacturing schedules change.
Let’s take a better have a look at the benefits of industrial automation engineering expertise.
The benefits of utilizing collaborative robots
We’re going to discover 5 important benefits of collaborative robots: security, flexibility, uniformity, productiveness, and affordability. As you’ll see shortly, these are all key explanation why firms throughout the globe are relying an increasing number of on automated manufacturing that leverages the facility of cobots.
Security
One of the crucial modern options of cobots, and a key differentiator between conventional industrial robots and collaborative robots, is that following a security evaluation cobots may be deployed proper beside human staff with out the necessity for particular security fencing. This reduces the general price of automation deployments whereas on the identical time lowering employee accidents attributable to repetitively performing the identical duties, reminiscent of meeting, packaging, sanding and screwdriving. Deploying cobots allows staff to be deployed on extra ergonomic (and better worth) duties, whereas on the identical time eradicating the security dangers related to conventional industrial automation.
Flexibility
Most factories might want to remodel and replace their processes over time. Whether or not attributable to elevated manufacturing wants or a shift in how merchandise are made or a change in the kind of product being manufactured, these modifications are virtually inevitable.
Common Robots’ collaborative robots, may be simply tailored to carry out all kinds of duties, together with meeting, dishing out, packaging, sanding, choose and place, welding, screwdriving, high quality inspection and plenty of others. Common Robots cobots are engineered to be simply programmable by most manufacturing worker following completion of a easy on-line course, additional including to the flexibleness of cobot-powered automation options.
Reliability
When people carry out repetitive duties, errors are inevitable as staff can get distracted and fatigued and this can be very tough (and unergonomic) for people to carry out the identical bodily process in precisely the identical method time and again all through a shift. Sadly, even probably the most minuscule of errors can have a big influence on the standard of a product.
Cobots eradicate this downside as a result of they will repeat the identical course of, time and again, with out deviation. There’s no simpler method to enhance the standard of a product that ensuring it’s constructed precisely to specification at each occasion. Conventional industrial robots provide reliability and consistency too however they’re much dearer and time-consuming to deploy than cobots.
Productiveness
Like their conventional robotic counterparts, cobots can be found 24/7 enabling busy producers to extend manufacturing and, the place crucial, to beat labor shortages.
For instance, Swiss kitchen producer Franke, which manufactures greater than 10,000 kitchen sinks per 12 months, deployed a UR5 cobot to assist with the repetitive, low-impact manufacturing process of dishing out glue. The deployment enabled Franke to free staff from strenuous, repetitive duties, enhance the operational effectivity of its manufacturing line and cut back materials waste.
