Page 14 - Metallforming Magazine December 2020

Cobots Keep Stamping
Presses Fed at WI Manufacturer
Collaborative robots, simple to set up, operate and maintain, tend mechanical presses in a work cell at Processed Metal Innovators. Find a cobot, too, in the company’s welding department, and expect to see more down the road.
BY LOUIS A. KREN, SENIOR EDITOR
There’s a shining, shooting star in the world of industrial automa- tion. Collaborative robots, com- monly called cobots and designed to work safely, economically and produc- tively alongside humans in a variety of applications, are exhibiting impres- sive market growth as manufacturers
employ them in new ways on a daily basis.
Two collaborative robots, or cobots, tend presses to the left in this three-press work cell at Processed Metals Innovators. This opera- tion, to form relatively flat parts without frequent die changes or other factors that might necessitate excessive programming, is considered an ideal pressroom-cobot application.
12 MetalForming/December 2020
www.metalformingmagazine.com
Economical to
obtain and simple to program and deploy, cobots, as detailed in a recent report from ReportLinker, Global Col- laborative Robots (Cobots) Market, 2020-2030, offer significant productivity potential and a rapid return on invest- ment. Given the profit potential, it’s no wonder that the Robotic Industries Association (RIA) anticipates cobot-sale revenues to reach 34 percent of the over- all industrial-robot market by 2025.
As RIA officials note, in many cases little to no programming is required to install cobots, thus reducing inte- gration costs, and their increasing flex- ibility opens up a range of manufac- turing tasks and applications.
Count Erik Larson as a cobot believ- er. As vice president of operations for Processed Metals Innovators (PMI), Larson oversees all manner of sheet metal forming and fabrication at the company’s 130,000-sq.-ft. manufactur-
ing plant in Bloomer, WI, home to 140 employees. The PMI shop floor boasts 15 mechanical stamping presses in capacities from 22.5 to 1000 tons as well as a 2000-ton hydraulic press. The fabrication side of the business counts a CNC punching machine, six press brakes, three laser cutting machines, and robotic and manual welding sta- tions. PMI also provides service-center functions via inhouse cut-to-length and slitting lines.
In 2018, Larson and the PMI man- agement team took note of cobots at an industry event, and set about deter- mining where the technology might fit. Doing so entailed a discussion with Hirebotics, an automation integrator that provides cloud-connected robots on a rental basis, eliminating capital outlays and simplifying applications while freeing associates for value- added and/or less hazardous tasks.