From Pilot to Production - How Cobots are Reshaping Manufacturing

Of all the benefits that collaborative robots, or cobots, bring to the modern workplace, increased productivity tends to be the main driver, Graham Williams, regional manager for Vectis Automation says.

“We have a three-to-four times typical increase in production output if we’re going from manual welding to robotic welding – and that can be as high as 10-12 times if I’m going from manual TIG Welding to cobot MIG welding,” he says.

“We had a customer that was doing about a 4m long weld, and it would normally take them about eight hours manually – and they trimmed that down to about 45 minutes with the cobot.”

But almost more important than this, Williams says, is the morale boost it offers to the workforce – the possibility of a robot taking on the least comfortable and most repetitive tasks.

“If I can have a cobot start with that, it’s going to increase my satisfaction coming into work every day – because I don’t have to do that thing I used to hate doing; the cobot does it now.”

Ultimately, he says, a cobot is designed to work safely alongside humans – rather than being a high-speed, high-volume robot kept away from humans in a large, fenced cell, or an automation system designed to operate into the night after all the workforce has gone home.

“We’re well outside the guinea pig phase,” Williams says. “There are now hundreds of systems out there in real fabrication shops, boosting quality and productivity and helping customers win more work.”

Aside from the additional safety structures and weeks of on-site commissioning and programming needed for regular industrial robots, Williams says cobots offer the additional benefit of flexibility – able to be used on a wide range of jobs.

A big part of that versatility comes from how the robot is deployed, he adds. Early cobot welding systems typically sat on fixed, gridded welding tables – limiting them largely to smaller components.

Since then, reach has increased and deployment methods have evolved, Williams says, saying the latest generation of the Universal Robots UR8L that the company uses equipped with a 2100mm reach – 450mm more than the prior generation.

Paired with a mobile Rover platform, the cobot can be rolled along a structural beam, a trailer chassis or other large fabrications – bringing the robot to the part rather than forcing the shop to bring every part to a fixed cell.

Another configuration uses a pivoting “diving board” extension to reach over large assemblies or into multiple zones, enabling the company to move beyond 1.5mm sheets into structural steel with thicknesses up to 150mm.

Greater reach, Williams adds, means “we can reach a greater number of parts, if you’re nesting a bunch of small parts, or it opens it up for doing larger parts themselves, where the actual assemblies are bigger.”

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Williams notes that while cobots have become more popular and more accessible to small and medium sized businesses, they are neither interchangeable nor created equal.

“It’s a tool, and there may be different styles of that tool to make sense for different jobs,” he says.

“The interface can be the same, but then you may have one that’s dedicated for smaller work, and you may have a different one that has a different look and feel to the mechanical structure, but it’s the same software able to do a larger assembly.”

The same, he says, is true of cobot integrators – professionals or engineering firms that design, program, install and configure cobots to operate safely alongside human workers.

“Your more nuanced processes like welding or plasma cutting… where we’ve got some complex motion and the process and integration amongst the robot and the auxiliary equipment…makes it where you do want that skilled integrator,” he says.

The first question to ask of a potential integrator, Williams adds, is to ensure they are genuinely safety-minded – having both researched local regulations and developed cobot working arrangements that are safe collaboratively.

“We happened to see a newcomer integrator that had a saw on the end of the cobot. The cobot was safe, but the saw was not necessarily safe – they have to think about those kinds of things,” he says.

“Is that safe, or can it be made safe with some back-end auxiliary safety systems that might be running in the background… [or are you] responsible for adding those elements yourself, and in the interim have you exposed your employees and created an unsafe condition?  These are all key questions that a certified, experience integrator solves so that manufacturers don’t have to worry about it – they can focus on putting the system to work in production.”

Williams’ second recommendation for selecting an integrator is choosing one that can grow alongside your business.

“We always look at the repeat order rate of a customer, and as that customer grows, do they go back to that integrator to grow with them?” he asks.

“Do they have the technology to have what the next phase looks like? Do they have other options either from a process standpoint or a deployment method standpoint to be able to scale with your business?”

Williams adds that a key part of the process of introducing cobots to a workplace is consulting with the customer to assess their existing upstream processes.

“Automation is going to shine a spotlight on the weakest points of your fabrication process,” he says.

“Loose upstream processes and improvised jigs that a skilled welder can ‘make work’ will trip up the repeatable paths that a cobot follows. It doesn’t have to be necessarily a precision engineered and machined fixture, but if it’s hammered into position, that might be a red flag.”

He cites an example where a customer was making fans – with staff shaping the product by hammering the fan blades over a barrel.

“If he hit it more times today than he did yesterday, the parts wouldn’t work in an automated cell. So, the recommendation was, actually, don’t get the cobot but rather focus on improving upstream processes first so that welding automation can be successful down the road,” he says.

The trick, he says, is identifying where the bottlenecks and pain points in the production process really are – before judging whether cobots or other automation processes are the solution.

For companies wondering whether cobots are right for them, Williams recommends first considering the type of parts manufactured, the common material thicknesses and the working envelope that is needed.

“I think sometimes there’s a natural tendency to pick the biggest, baddest, most complex part in the shop and say, that’s where I need to throw the technology – but maybe it makes more sense to pick something simpler – the ‘crawl, walk, run’ approach.”

“Don’t be afraid to reach out to an integrator… see how the technology has changed since maybe the last time you looked… It really seems like in the past few years, the answer has changed from a no to a yes for many of the folks we work with.”