I need to build a machine to build my machine?

I like to picture a manufacturer as a poor soul who had a great idea for a product but then realized they needed to manufacture that product at a scale and price they didn't even know was possible. Their genius is in identifying a problem, creating a solution, and bringing it to market, not creating a highly custom machine that builds a product.

For this reason, custom automation is the norm for many manufacturers. Chances are they're making something no one else does in a way no one else can. Because of this there's nothing they can simply buy off-the-shelf: The design, function, and performance is on them, and no one can help them...except...maybe a robot?

The Age of Actuation

In the past custom machinery required:

• Custom, handcrafted tooling to handle your specific parts in their current form. You never get it right the first time, so multiple these costs a few times just to be safe
• Actuators, cylinders, conveyors, chains...driven by belts, air, screws, magnets...which one do you choose? There's not a correct answer, but someone probably has an opinion depending on what they're selling
• Expensive electric motors or finicky pneumatics. Motors only take a few hours to get spinning and...what's that noise you hear? Oh yeah, that's the pneumatics leaking and wasting your money.
• Custom drive and control system written in a proprietary language. Cruelly, these drives and controllers are usually made by different manufacturers so you'll have to learn a couple of new languages that were poorly written to push some hardware. Don't worry, they'll be obsolete soon.
• Countless hours of design, testing, troubleshooting, and maintenance of a system no one else can support you on. You made it, only you know how it works. The product manufacturers are just there to make sure their part works, "Works fine on my machine!"
• The genius who built it not getting hit by the proverbial bus. For real, though, I've seen countless amazing machines gathering dust because their local Newton retired and has dedicated his life to building his own plasma cutting table.

When the stars align and your customer doesn't change their requirements in 6 months these systems can be true game changers for your production. Let's be real, though, someone is going to try to rip you off, your customer is going to chase the next fancy thing, and your newly-minted machine designer is going to realize they can do something easier, which is definitely NOT building a custom plasma cutting table...

The Age of Robots

These days if you're designing a what we call an XYZ-Theta system (fancy letters meaning "it can move around and spin") you're probably using what we call a SCARA robot. How is a SCARA robot different than previous approaches?

• Custom, handcrafted tooling to handle your specific parts in their current form. You never get it...oh wait, this is the exact same...tooling is important!
• A single robot arm that, while bulkier than previous approaches, actually has fewer moving parts. Sure, belts and screws are still involved, but most motors are bolted directly to each other.
• A single, familiar proprietary language OR more commonly these days: a nice GUI that makes programming no longer the sole responsibility of degreed engineers and high priests of automation. You can also BYO language like Python, C++, or if you're a true greybeard, C...
• Hours (you'll likely be able to count them this time) of programming and testing of a system that will look familiar to most people who have deployed robots before. You'll probably be able to find some help now that people know what they hell you're working on.

Now when your customer changes their requirements you can simply swap your tool and update your code. YOU can rip people off by scouring YouTube for videos of robots in factories. An army of engineers and even technicians are now available to you because chances are they've worked with a robot like yours.

That's great, so what's the catch?

The problem is: Instead of costing tens of thousands of dollars in custom hardware and months of your time, you now are only spending thousands (sometimes as low as $7,895 with Epson's T3-B model) for the robot and merely weeks of time. You're going to have to figure out something to do with all of that extra time and money...might I suggest a couple of relaxing fishing trips?

Really though, the whole point of automation and robots is to enable you to do more with less. These "new" (SCARAs have been around for decades) technologies do the hard labor so you don't have to. Make more money, spend more time with your family, save your muscles and joints from problems late in life, and just use robots.

I love robots because they do exactly what they're told. I hate robots because they do exactly what they're told.

Find more information about SCARA robots here: SCARA/ 6-Axis - Olympus Controls

Think a SCARA robot would fit in your operations? Reach out to an expert here: Get in Touch - Olympus Controls