The company’s first collaborative automation project used a UR10e cobot and its built-in palletizing function to pick parts from an organized tray to feed a gantry system for the CNC machine that performs threading, drilling, and other operations. It took an employee about an hour to load the ordered grid on the tray, and the cobot could run for about 8 hours unmanned, but the company needed a system that could run all night without an operator. NEU vice president Brent Petit explored vibratory systems, but they couldn’t meet NEU’s repeatability requirements. That’s when he was introduced to ActiNav.
“The advantages of the ActiNav system is that we can just bring a bin right over to the machine, set it up, and it will start picking right from the bin,” says Petit. “We don’t need to have an employee standing there, picking up the parts and placing them into that pallet system that we were doing beforehand.”
During day shifts, employees can quickly refill the bin as needed, then return to other tasks. At the end of the day, workers simply bring a full bin to the ActiNav system, check the standard, set it to run, and leave for the night. The bin holds enough parts to keep the robot and CNC machine running unmanned all night long, and employees return in the morning to bins of finished product. They inspect the last part off the machine and take the finished bin to inventory, refill the raw parts bin, and let the robot keep running.
