Benefits of Moving Forward with Robotics
Brief Summary:
Past attempts of automating manufacturing lines failed, though with the proper actions companies will now find great benefits in this incorporation. Converting to a robotic system concerns companies but if done correctly the system is more economically rewarding and dependable.
- Naturally, the promise of achieving cost-efficient, consistent machining results through the use of robotics and automation is attractive to large metalworking concerns and small job shops alike. But many managers considering automation wonder if the time is right for a change.
- Imagine a part running on the same machine over three shifts daily. Every morning, Operator A sets up his material to the left of his CNC milling machine. At the start of the second shift, Operator B arranges inbound material to right. Later that evening, Operator C stays with B's material setup but adjusts machining speeds and feeds according to personal preferences.
- The need to tame unbridled fluctuations in rates to keep production—and profits—consistent is another indicator pointing to an impending move to automation. Users of manually loaded CNC machine tools have historically come to expect production rates to vary widely from shift to shift and day to day.
- As real as these numbers are, many shop owners contemplating the move to robotics often find them hard to comprehend.
- In fact, today's extremely reliable machine tools and off-the-shelf components have brought both the cost and availability of automated CNC machining within the reach of shops that only a decade ago might never have considered themselves viable candidates for automation.
- Misapplication of robotics, marginally functional equipment, and unsuitable applications for robotics marked other early, but failed, attempts at automation. Simple errors like omitting gaging in automation systems doomed other early systems to fail.
- Typically, shop owners can expect the transition to robotics and automation to entail a reasonable payback when a group of two or three machines are involved in the production of similar parts on a regular basis.
- It is currently a trend for machine tool distributors to have both metalworking and automation expertise under one roof.
- As the metalworking industry becomes increasingly more competitive, more owner/operators are looking to robotics and automation for solutions to the pressures they face to remain productive and profitable.
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