We have been extremely busy for the last few months at Abel Womack working on enhancing our robotic offering to allow us to better meet our customer needs.

Recently, we’ve partnered with Universal Robots for our collaborative robot requirements. Universal Robots is currently the largest collaborative robot distributor (also known as cobots) in the US.

Cobots are changing the way we work

What can all these exciting new offerings do and how do they work together? Let me explain.

• A cobot allows a person to work within the same space, literally side by side if needed, with a robot. The robots have a built-in force torque sensor so that when it senses an unknown force it automatically stops. Therefore, fencing or guarding is not required for many applications.
• With a small amount of training, cobots are very easy to program; most of you could program these units.
• Cobots are very compact and can work in very small spaces. There is a downside—their capacity is currently 10kg (22lbs). Once you add an end of arm tool you are only able to pick up about 15-17 pounds and they work at a rate of about 10-12 picks per minute.
• If you are a bit disappointed about the capacity, no worries. The UR20 has recently been released and will be available in June of this year. It offers 44lbs of capacity and even with an end of arm tool, we should be able to handle 32-36 pounds of product.

Furthermore, Universal Robots offer unprecedented safety and one of the fastest payback times in the industry- often a year or less.

Partners providing more power

To augment the new line of cobots we also have partnered with Robotiq and OnRobot. Robotiq and OnRobot build powered bases that the robots attach to, allowing you to build loads up to 105” tall. These bases move up and down with the robot allowing these small units to now build tall pallets with ease. Both these powered base suppliers include software that easily steps you through a program to build a pallet with layers simply by entering box sizes and desired heights. They even have built-in sensors for the pallet location thus making this entire set up simple to deploy.

Optimal offerings

If your project is outside of these criteria, we are still able to help as we are a full-line Fanuc dealer. Although Fanuc does have a line of cobots that recently entered the market, we wanted to broaden our offerings and provide both to our customers.

Ready to take your operation’s performance to new heights? Learn more about the benefits and ease of deploying robots in your organization. Contact Abel Womack for a consultation today.