Industries for Collaborative Robots

Automotive manufacturers have turned to lightweighting in recent years – the trend of substituting heavy metal parts with plastic to reduce vehicle mass and create greater efficiency. Plastic injection molding machines require constant tending – and those jobs are hard to fill. Sawyer is ideal for taking on these dull, repetitive tasks when labor is hard to find.

The testing of circuit board assemblies – separating the “good ones” from the “bad ones” – is a dull but critical job that is often difficult for staff. Sawyer, with high resolution force control to protect parts that could easily be damaged, is an ideal automation solution to keep production going.

In-circuit testing (ICT) is a pretty simple process (insert circuit board, start test run, sort boards based on test results), but it can quickly become a bottleneck, taking employees’ time that could be spent on more complex steps in the electronic manufacturing process. Sawyer, with its high resolution force control to protect delicate parts, is an ideal automation solution to increase output and is highly accepted by its human colleagues.

Automation used to be accessible only to very large manufacturers using big expensive robots to execute the same task over and over again for months. But now Rethink Robotic´s smart collaborative robots are affordable and adaptable enough for small, family run businesses, allowing them to increase quality, reduce reliance on third party suppliers and remain competitive

Many manufacturers deal with demand seasonality. When educational institutions are part of your customer base, staffing for back-to-school deadlines can be very challenging.  Sawyer is an adaptable automation solution that can adapt to the ebbs and flows of production runs, and reduce the risk of downtime.

In metal fabrication, typical tasks include tending a machine and manipulating parts to be cut, formed, welded, and inspected. Not only can these be extremely tedious, but also quite dangerous. As a result, fab shops turn to automation in the form of affordable collaborative robots, allowing people to take on more value-added work while also avoiding injuries.

Many manufacturers rely on co-packers to gain operational efficiencies and get their products into stores. And co-packers often turn to automation to improve their own productivity and adapt to changing consumer buying trends. Rethink Robotic´s smart, collaborative robot is perfect for many sorting and packing tasks, allowing their human co-workers to focus on higher skilled jobs.

Plastics manufacturers are all too familiar with the struggle to fill the dull, repetitive jobs that tend to drive most people away within their first shift. However, those same tasks – such as packing plastic bottles into a container – are a perfect match for collaborative robots, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And with an ROI in a matter of months, it’s a manufacturing automation solution that just makes sense.

Picking parts from a press and then placing them in a CNC machine is tedious work. Doing that hour after hour, while also counting the parts to fill a box with the proper amount is a recipe for human error. Cobots are an ideal fit for these repetitive, dull tasks so common in plastics manufacturing.

The degating operation of the plastic injection molding process is a monotonous and repetitive task for a human worker, one that often ends up with part quality issues or potentially repetitive stress injuries for employees. Sawyer is a perfect automation solution for this kind of job, and can help increase output while at the same time, improve part quality.

Once plastic parts are formed by an injection molder, the next step in the production process often involves a CNC machine. But finding the labor to pick parts and precisely place them in a CNC machine for three shifts a day, five or even seven days per week, can be impossible. Cobot Sawyer^TM can handle the parts all day, and it can pay for itself in just a few months.