Blog
Get your QC team back to work safely – with robots
Collaborative robots help with social distancing in the QC/QA lab. Quality teams at high-mix manufacturing facilities are getting back to full production after shut-downs and slow-downs caused by the response to Covid-19 in the USA. They are finding that...
Five Things You Should Know About Parts Trays for Pick-Measure-Record-and-Place Automation
A Q-Span Workstation uses cobot grippers to automatically pick parts from “parts-in” trays and place them into appropriate “parts-out” trays after measuring them. Designing parts-in and parts-out trays for each part is not difficult, but there are five key points to keep in mind.
What goes down is likely to go up faster
Here's a good opinion piece from AMT, the Association for Manufacturing Technology. As many previous recessions, depressions, and crashes have proven, U.S. business will be back. While preparing for the economic downturn, keep in mind that growing from the...
Hidden Quality Costs in Manufacturing
Although we carefully monitor costs in manufacturing, many costs are not top of mind because they’re out of sight. Like an iceberg, most of the cost mass remains hidden underwater. Here’s one way you can address those massive costs for small-part manufacturing.
The future of collaborative robots starts now
Collaborative robots move beyond the low-hanging fruit of machine tending and material handling If you are part of the robotics industry, you are keenly aware of the growing phenomenon of collaborative robotics. In an industry that has in the past evolved...
Robots Aren’t Taking Our Jobs
Automation helps companies address the labor shortage in manufacturing, including quality assurance As robot installations become more common on the production floor, more plant workers worry about their job security. However, with the proper training and...
How Robotics Can Help Small and Midsize Businesses Thrive
Small and midsize businesses stand to benefit even more from robotics than bigger companies, and there are numerous government initiatives designed to help them with adoption Robotics Business Review has published a free primer on how small and midsize...
How does automated small-part inspection make a factory more competitive?
New Scale Robotics CEO David Henderson spoke with Robotics Tomorrow about small, precision grippers and electronic calipers for cobots. Here’s an excerpt:
Precision gripper comparison
You need a precision gripper if you wish to use collaborative robots for small part manipulation, intricate assembly work, or automated measurement inspection. The precision gripper must have: small size low mass high measurement precision The NSR-PG-10-20-URe...
Eastec 2019 highlights
See three precision parallel grippers on one UR3e cobot in this demo from Eastec 2019. The three grippers take five different precision measurements of a small part, enable in-process decisions, and record the data.