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Industrial Robot - Which brands to consider?

e30ryan

Aluminum
Joined
Oct 26, 2016
Location
Ontario, Canada
I have been tasked with buying a robot to replace an existing mechanical system for feeding a stamping press. We are a university doing research (mostly in warm/hot sheet forming applications), so continuous production of the same part(s) is not part of our daily life.

This will be the first robot installed in our labs, so we are essentially starting with a clean-slate in terms of brand preferences and compatibility. We will be connecting this to an Allen Bradley PLC via Ethernet/IP (I assume all major robot manufacturers will have this comm available).

What I am looking for help with is which brand would provide the best features for low volume prototyping/research? We will be continuously changing parts, geometries, paths, etc, so I don't want to end up with a cumbersome interface which makes these sorts of changes more difficult. Which brands offer the easiest to use offline simulation software?

I have been looking at Fanuc (mostly due to user base), ABB, Yaskawa, Kuka, etc.

Our robot capacity that I am aiming for would be 6 axis, 40-60 kg rated payload, and a reach of 2.0-2.5 m.

Cheers
 
Kawasaki Robotics would be my preferred choice based on experience. Simple to program in block, or use AS language and have a world of programming functionality available.
 
Fazzios junk yard in Glassboro NJ had 12 Fanucs about that size with the controllers for $5k each. If I recall correctly they were sent out for a rebuild and never reinstalled. So they might be in fine shape. One was still on display last time I looked.
 








 
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