Vermont manufacturer of wooden tableware has successfully deployed a UR5e collaborative robot to handle the finish sanding of cutting boards. The new robot colleague, named ‘Sandrew’ by the staff, has delivered a 40% increase in the production throughput, which resulted in the robot paying itself back in just two months.
The business transformation
Andrew Pearce Bowls started looking into automation as a manual sander was promoted to a finish turner, leaving open a position that turned out to be challenging to fill. “It’s hard to recruit somebody to stand at a downdraft table and sand cutting boards for eight hours,” says Alex Drew, application engineer at Andrew Pearce Bowls. “Sanding was really becoming the choke point in our production.”