Linatex

01 the short story

It took engineering company Linatex nearly a decade to find an automated solution flexible enough to meet their versatile product line. With Universal Robots’ robot technology, they finally got what they wanted: a low-cost robot that can be easily re-programmed for new production batches.

02 the challenge

Linatex produces plastic components found in everything from artificial hips to aeroplanes and wind turbines. This versatility often means that batches are extremely small and requires that production equipment can be reprogrammed both quickly and easily to adapt to the different tasks.

For almost a decade, Jørn Trustrup, product manager at Linatex, had been trying to find a low cost robot that would meet the requirements in a profitable way but so far in vain: “A robot quickly comes to half a million kroner when you need consultants to install it – and when you also need specialists to operate and programme it the idea quickly goes out the window”.

03 the solution

The long-standing challenge of finding a flexible, low-cost robot was finally solved when Linatex was introduced to Universal Robots. The flexible robot arm meets the company’s criteria perfectly and has taken over the task of inserting plastic components into the CNC turning centre and removing them again. A tedious job that used to be performed manually.

“The robot arm from Universal Robots takes over the tasks that none of the staff will miss doing. At the same time, it is so easy to set that our employees themselves can re-programme it”, says Jørn Trustrup and stresses the intuitive user interface in their choice of Universal Robots. “You don’t need to type or calculate anything to get the robot to work. You just need to show it the movements”. 

So far the low cost robotic arm is used in the largest productions of 10,000 pieces but Linatex expects to use the robot for batches down to as few as 50 pieces.