Cost Reduction Due to Lasers

These days more and more com­pa­nies are reduc­ing their costs due to the use of lasers and indus­tri­al robots. Sys­tems by ADI­GE and soft­ware by Fanuc Robot­ics are increas­ing accu­ra­cy and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty while decreas­ing the need for labor­ers, there­fore great­ly reduc­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing costs.

Orig­i­nal­ly an acronym for Light Ampli­fi­ca­tion by Stim­u­lat­ed Emis­sion of Radi­a­tion, a laser is a device that gen­er­ates an intense beam of light through stim­u­lat­ed emis­sion of pho­tons from excit­ed atoms or mol­e­cules. Though pri­mar­i­ly used for illu­mi­na­tion, lasers have become extreme­ly use­ful in com­mer­cial, indus­tri­al, and mil­i­tary applications.

Per­haps most impres­sive is a laser’s abil­i­ty to cut through met­al, mak­ing it espe­cial­ly use­ful in man­u­fac­tur­ing. This appli­ca­tion, and the abil­i­ty to com­bine lasers with robots, has been a major fac­tor in reduc­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing costs both domes­ti­cal­ly and inter­na­tion­al­ly. Laser machines are used for cut­off, bevel­ing, and cut­ting (slots, holes, notch­es, and oth­er fea­tures) in tube and pipe. Because of the laser, cuts are much clean­er which improves part qual­i­ty. Com­pa­nies like Fanuc Robot­ics have cap­i­tal­ized on the abil­i­ties of lasers and incor­po­rat­ed them into their robot­ic devices. This has reduced, and in some cas­es elim­i­nat­ed, the man­u­al han­dling of parts. Because of this there has been an incred­i­ble decrease in the amount of peo­ple need­ed to pro­duce some­thing. Robots can run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with lit­tle to no human atten­tion. Also, these robots with laser tech­nol­o­gy are quite accu­rate and elim­i­nate human error, there­by reduc­ing costs.

Fanuc​’s Laser­Mate RTC (Robot­ic Tube Cut­ter) is one of these laser-robot prod­ucts. It con­sists of a laser head indexed with a two-axis ser­vo device, inte­grat­ed with a six-axis robot. Its cut library, which stores tube sizes and fea­tures, facil­i­tates part changeover. It also pro­vides nest­ing for best use of stock, and its mem­o­ry can hold instruc­tions for man­u­fac­tur­ing up to four unique parts from a sin­gle tube.

Over the past fifty years the use of lasers and indus­tri­al robots has changed man­u­fac­tur­ing around the world and has reduced costs dra­mat­i­cal­ly. The next fifty years will sure­ly see even more pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and cost sav­ings as these tech­nolo­gies con­tin­ue to evolve.

Con­tact Robots​.com rep­re­sen­ta­tives today for more infor­ma­tion; they can be reached online or at 877−762−6881.