The goal of every company is to improve production lines, to increase productivity and to reduce waste without limiting the final quality of the product. Precisely to meet this level of efficiency, more and more companies are adopting robotic automation in manufacturing.
What are the main benefits of industrial robotics, and how do you stay abreast with the latest innovations and implement them within your company? Here is an overview, with some concrete examples from Arcos’ many years of experience.
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What is meant by robotic automation
When we talk about robotic automation, we refer to the use of robotic technologies to automatically perform those tasks that were previously done by human operators or mechanisms.
Automation in manufacturing can be adopted through a range of technologies, often combined: from autonomous robotics and artificial intelligence, to tools such as high-speed cameras for error detection in products.
Each reality can make different choices based on the type of investment it intends to make: in fact, it is possible to introduce a single robot capable of performing a specific process, or to make the plant more efficient by completely automating a production line.
Why adopt robotic automation?
The use of robotic automation meets a need now strongly felt by most manufacturing companies: to increase productivity and efficiency, but without affecting the health of operators and ensuring a serene and safe working environment.
It is with robotic systems that manufacturing processes are made smoother, more accurate and more retrievable. For a human being, in fact, it is normal for the level of concentration and lucidity in performing a task over time to decrease. Robots, on the other hand, maintain the same speed and efficiency regardless of the time they are used, without any kind of slowdown.
What are the most important benefits?
The advantages of integrating this technology are extremely beneficial.
In fact, robots are able to carry out processing without ever stopping: they do not require breaks and operate steadily, even reaching a regime of 24 hours a day, every day of the week. With this aspect alone, it is possible to understand how productivity can increase significantly, while not affecting the health of the workers in any way. Thanks to specific training, the operators, previously employed in manual labor, will thus be able to control the progress of work and the efficiency of the robots without danger to their health and without performing sometimes alienating activities.
Another advantage of robotic automation, in fact, is the increased safety that is guaranteed in the work environment. The operator will no longer have to deal with strenuous, repetitive, and dangerous tasks: his presence will be useful as a check on the state of activity and quality of the work performed by the robotic system.
Robots, moreover, are able to maintain the same pace and quality of production over time, ensuring higher output per unit of time. What this means, quite simply, is that more products will be processed, but in a shorter production time than it is required for manual processing.
Some concrete examples of efficiency
Due to its countless advantages, the use of robotic automation in manufacturing has also spread widely in the area of surface finishing. In fact, robotic finishing systems are used in all machining operations involving automated finishing, and they are:
- robotic grinding automation,
- robotized polishing,
- robotized deburring,
- robotic cutting system,
- automated sandblaster.
For each type of machining you can find the main case studies of systems made by Arcos for different companies and application areas. Demonstrating how Arcos’ commitment to industrial automation is to offer intuitive, elegant and extremely efficient technologies, let us look at two examples.
First example: production of clutch discs
This video shows a robotic system made for a company producing friction discs, which needed to limit the enormous waste of time due to the manual performance of some tasks.
The discs, in fact, were produced by gluing a metal disc to the already die-cut friction material. After this operation, carried out manually, the disc was subjected to the deburring stage.
Thanks to the Arcos plant, the friction material is now die-cut directly onto the disc, ensuring significant time savings without any subsequent processing or personnel intervention.
Second example: automatic loading of aluminum radiators
In this case, however, the loading process of aluminum radiators was made more efficient through the introduction of a QR code: the robot reads the code, recognizes the model of the radiator, and automatically modifies the gripping and unloading of the part. Again, time savings were largely ensured due to a faster and smoother loading process.
Conclusions
Thanks to the “Industry 4.0 revolution”, which has already been widespread in manufacturing and production companies for years, there is enough data to demonstrate how new technologies and robotic automation can increase the competitiveness and efficiency of companies.
Indeed, the interconnection and cooperation of human and robotic resources within the production chain allows to reduce cycle time and production costs through increased operational availability, improved efficiency and consistent product quality.
For years, Arcos has been offering robotic finishing solutions useful for companies production. Do you want to know more? Contact us: the Arcos Team will be at your total disposal.