As part of our mission to strengthen and grow New Mexico’s manufacturing and give our state’s manufacturers a competitive advantage through advanced automation, we are partnering with Build With Robots, LLC, to offer collaborative robot (CoBot) seminars and hands-on CoBot application demos. Founded in 2017 by serial entrepreneurs Chris Ziomek & Randy Krall, Build With Robots is a regional authorized distributor of the Denmark-based robotic arm manufacturer Universal Robots (UR).
Last month’s inaugural demo was held at San Juan College’s Quality Center for Business in Farmington. During the event, Ziomek outlined how CoBots enable non-experts to deploy robot automation quickly and cost-effectively, illustrating the ease and safety differences between CoBots and industrial robots. He also discussed the zero-maintenance aspect of UR CoBots, which have a rated life of 35,000 hours of operation, translating to 11.98 years assuming 8-hour days.
Attendees learned about numerous CoBot applications that can benefit manufacturers, including machine tending – where the CoBot performs the repetitive tasks involved in tending a shop’s lathe or CNC machine, for example — welding, screw-driving, assembly, painting, dispensing, packaging & palletizing, and more. (An example of machine tending can be viewed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BPxPRi_Hto. And CoBot welding can be viewed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNNDrxOxCZM.) Because CoBots are safe alongside people and can be re-purposed easily, they are a valuable tool for manufacturers with medium-volume or high-mix production.
Will CoBots replace human workers? There is evidence of the opposite phenomenon: the resulting increase in productivity leading to more human jobs.
Future CoBot seminars and demos will be announced in upcoming newsletters. NMMEP is now offering instruction in Automation Mapping and Lean Cell Design. For more information on those courses and future workshops, please call (505) 262-0921 or email info@newmexicomep.org.