End-of-Arm Tooling Cuts Assembly Costs

Since the ear­ly days of man­u­fac­tur­ing, man has always tried to fur­ther inno­va­tion while sim­pli­fy­ing con­struc­tion. Assem­bly robot­ics is no exception.

There is one major ques­tion that man­u­fac­tur­ers need to answer when attempt­ing to pare down their process­es: How do we cut costs?

The answers are sim­ple – com­bine process­es, elim­i­nate process­es, and realign man­pow­er. Man­u­fac­tur­ers are able to achieve these goals by inte­grat­ing assem­bly automa­tion into their facilities.

One way man­u­fac­tur­ers are reach­ing these goals is by using dif­fer­ent end-of-arm-tool­ing, also known as end effec­tors. While human work­ers use tools like wrench­es, drills, etc. when they are assem­bling items, assem­bly robots use end-of-arm-tool­ing, like vary­ing grip­pers, to com­plete the application.

Grip­per end effec­tors can be used to assem­ble many prod­ucts, when man­u­fac­tur­ers take into con­sid­er­a­tion the dif­fer­ences in grip­ping tol­er­ances, depend­ing on the mate­r­i­al. Once that is con­sid­ered, the assem­bly robot can be pro­grammed to grip the dif­fer­ent parts.

Assem­bly grip­ping end effec­tors can be claw grip­pers, hand-like grip­pers or even vac­u­um grip­pers. Items with more width, depth and height can be picked up by claw assem­bly robot grip­pers, while flat­ter items, like panes of glass, are bet­ter picked up with vac­u­um assem­bly robot grippers.

With the vary­ing end effec­tors on the mar­ket today, and the pletho­ra of assem­bly robots that these effec­tors can use these effec­tors, man­u­fac­tur­ers try­ing to auto­mate their robot­ic assem­bly process­es can be left feel­ing a lit­tle overwhelmed.

That is where Robots​.com comes in.

Robots​.com pro­vides solu­tions from many robot com­pa­nies, includ­ing Fanuc, Motoman, ABB, Uni­ver­sal Robots, and KUKA. Robots​.com not only sells new and refur­bished sin­gle-robot arms, dual-robot arms and work­cells, but also cus­tomizes these items with the right con­trollers, safe­ty pack­ages and end-of-arm-tool­ing for the customer.

If you are con­sid­er­ing automat­ing your assem­bly appli­ca­tion, con­tact Robots​.com today online or at 877−762−6881. Our team of high­ly-skilled tech­ni­cians and engi­neers will work with you to cus­tomize the per­fect assem­bly sys­tem for your facility.