The era for industrial robots
Everybody
knows that the robotic automation came first of all from automotive. It is
reasonable – lots of welding operations, mass product, necessity of high speeds
and repeatability, so everything to start the great robot integration.
Automotive is the biggest, richest and the most lovely customer for any robots
manufacturer and usually all their “key” or “gold” customers are automotive
factories.
Next things
are hazard, hot and danger environments. Why to use human and to pay great
additional costs for hard work if it is much better to replace the job with the
robot? For this reason robots came to all the hard environment technologies:
forging equipment, foundries and steel mills automation, work with big
concentration of gases, dusts etc. This is the great replacement which makes
the cut of human work in hazard operations on the factory and realizes non-stop
24 hours production.
After that
robots came to all operations which require repeatability, mass production and
clear cycle – the general industrial automation. But anyway even if the modern
robotic arm could be programmed to give you the glass of beer, write or play
piano we can’t forget the main purposes of robots: welding and
loading-unloading operations. There are much more industrial solutions, for
example even milling with robot but the first two are the most used and the
general one.
But there
is too much information about robots so we do not want to talk about general
things. The one phrase of this note is – “today is the new era of industrial
robots”. Why? Robots made a great jump to come from the special welding lines
and transfer systems for automotive with budgets for dozens of millions Euro to
the position that even small workshop can came to the robot use. Do you know
what the start of the price is when you can think about purchasing of robot? If
you will go to used machine tools market you can see the offers with the start
price of ten thousand Euros for working and not the ancient robot arm. Yes, it
is not the final investments – you need a lot of things in addition: to realize
the application, to buy or to manufacture the clamps or holders for your
operation, to make programming, probably to buy the other software package, to
buy safety devices etc. etc. But you can’t think that the robots automation is
something incredible expensive and for this reason – untouchable for small
manufacturers. For sure prices for new robots much higher, the complete system
from the manufacturer or robots integrator could be valued with the several
hundred thousand Euros, but…
Production
of robots for the market is really massive, modernization of big factories
makes possibilities for replacements of hundred robots for the big lines and
the availability of them on the used machines market, manufacturers try to
reduce prices to be competitive etc. Robotic arm last years is not something
futuristic from the future but the standard industrial tool like any other CNC
machine. Great possibilities and functions together with the risen human
salaries make robots the great investment; moreover for robot instead of the
machine tool you can change the function and application. And moreover the
price possibilities on the used market can help to the small companies also to
touch the advantages of the great automation generation.
photo credit: jurvetson FANUC Robot Assembly Demo via photopin (license)
photo credit: jurvetson FANUC Robot Assembly Demo via photopin (license)
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