Rail-mounted robots – saving floor space “on track”

When man­u­fac­tur­ers are first design­ing their robot­ic work­cells or sys­tems, they need to envi­sion the floor space they have avail­able. Those with small­er facil­i­ties may be able to save floor space through rail-mount­ed, or gantry, robots that run on over­head tracks.

Not only are gantry robots good for sav­ing floor space just by their design, they are also able to save floor space, espe­cial­ly with pal­letiz­ing appli­ca­tions, because they can stack prod­ucts high­er than the typ­i­cal floor mount­ed robot.

Despite their upside-down pre­sen­ta­tion, a rail-mount­ed robot may actu­al­ly be more effi­cient man­u­fac­tur­ers that need to save floor space. The robots can move along a track, doing sev­er­al things on a pro­duc­tion line, instead of being in one fixed posi­tion and area. This could also save man­u­fac­tur­ers mon­ey by hav­ing one rail-mount­ed robot do the job of two or three floor-mount­ed robots when the man­u­fac­tur­ers have lim­it­ed floor space.

Gantry mod­els from Fanuc, Motoman, and KUKA not only save floor space, but also oper­ate at a high­er lev­el than human work­ers could ever achieve man­u­al­ly. As stat­ed above, these robots can stack prod­ucts high­er and can stack them at a rate of 24 cycles per minute for 25 kg items.

How­ev­er, rail-mount­ed robots are not the only way that man­u­fac­tur­ers are able to save floor space in their facil­i­ties. One of the new trends for robot­ics man­u­fac­tur­ers is to make small­er, stack­able robot con­trollers that can sit one, two or even three high. This frees up floor space that would have been tak­en up by sev­er­al big, bulky con­trollers in the past, espe­cial­ly in mul­ti-robot systems.

Robots​.com, a cer­ti­fied inte­gra­tor for Fanuc, Motoman, ABB, Uni­ver­sal Robots, and KUKA robot­ics, has sev­er­al rail-mount­ed robots and stack-able con­trollers avail­able to save every inch of floor space nec­es­sary in your facility.

For more infor­ma­tion on automat­ing with any of these mod­els from Robots​.com, con­tact us today online or at 877−762−6881.