Factories across the United States use robots for welding, painting, assembly, packing and palletizing, and smaller shops are adopting them too. This guide covers where robots usually start, how a small shop can plan a first project, and recent industry reporting.
First robots tend to go where work is dangerous, repetitive or demands precision.
Welding, painting, handling hot or heavy parts.
Packing, palletizing and machine tending.
Dispensing, screwdriving and small assembly.
Cameras and sensors that check parts on the line.
A first robot is a learning project as much as a production one. Choose it to succeed.
Choose a task with steady volume, stable parts and a clear measure of success.
Budget for guarding, fixtures, grippers, integration and training, not only the robot.
Decide who will run, program and maintain it, and train them before it arrives.
Get the basic cycle working reliably before adding options.
Compare against the old process honestly, and share what you learned with the team.
Robots take over repetitive tasks, but people program them, maintain them, inspect what they make and keep improving the process. The shops that get the most from automation are usually the ones that involve their people from the first day.
Short summaries of recent reporting, in our own words, with links to the original sources.
Short summaries of recent reporting, with links to the original articles.
The trade group's quarterly figures show North American robot orders growing, with demand spreading beyond carmakers to electronics, food, metals and life sciences.
Read the original at Association for Advancing Automation (A3)A tour of the magazine's plant of the year in Georgia, which combines a large robot fleet with inspection technology and people on the line.
Read the original at ASSEMBLYTeradyne is investing in a manufacturer of data center hardware, with plans to bring its robots and test systems onto those production lines.
Read the original at The Robot ReportHeadlines are quoted as they appear at the source; summaries are our own. Follow the links for the full reporting.