The Gentle Robotic Solution for Ceramic Tile Manufacturers

Ceram­ic tiles are heavy, expen­sive, and very frag­ile. These are the very rea­sons that com­pa­nies have shunned the idea of robot­ic man­u­fac­tur­ing automa­tion for so long.

For years, human work­ers had arranged these tiles into the prop­er pack­ag­ing as gen­tly as pos­si­ble to ready them for ship­ping around the world. How could robots pos­si­bly han­dle these tiles as care­ful­ly as humans?

The answer was the feath­er touch and easy lift­ing abil­i­ty of the mate­r­i­al han­dling robot. Mate­r­i­al han­dling robots can pick up items like ceram­ic tiles with grip­pers that exert the same amount of pro­grammed pres­sure every time in its ​“fin­ger­tips.”

This is an advan­tage over human work­ers who can drop tiles or break them dur­ing load­ing. These man­u­fac­tur­ing robot­ic sys­tems can also move tiles faster, with more accu­ra­cy. While a human may be able to move 60 tiles in one minute, a man­u­fac­tur­ing robot can pick and place up to 150 tiles in a minute, more than dou­bling the work speed, which cuts pro­duc­tion and labor costs.

Cre­aton, a clay tile man­u­fac­tur­er in Ger­many, decid­ed to auto­mate with KUKA man­u­fac­tur­ing robot­ics to improve its pro­duc­tion line. With the KUKA robots in place, the line is now pro­duc­ing up to 60 tons of clay roof­ing tiles per minute, leaps and bounds beyond where they were before automation.

That is just one of many suc­cess sto­ries that comes from switch­ing to robot­ic man­u­fac­tur­ing automation.

Robots​.com, a cer­ti­fied inte­gra­tor for KUKA Robot­ics, as well as robot­ic lead­ers Fanuc and Motoman, works to build sys­tems to help cus­tomers in the way that Cre­aton was helped with their automa­tion sys­tem. Our team of high­ly-skilled sales­peo­ple will work to get you a sys­tem per­fect for you facility.

For more infor­ma­tion about man­u­fac­tur­ing robot­ics from Robots​.com, con­tact us today online or at 877−762−6881.