A Factory Grows In Brooklyn, With User-friendly Robots
Cobots work the night shift at Voodoo Manufacturing, a startup in Brooklyn, NY. When the company deployed Universal Robots’ UR10 collaborative robot—known as a cobot — production output tripled and costs dropped significantly.
Voodoo Manufacturing runs a rapidly growing 3D printing factory. It’s scaling up to handle large-production runs that compete with injection molding. It needed help in a hurry to automate the manual loading and unloading of mobile build plates in its 3D printers.
Company decision-makers considered several different collaborative robot options. Their challenge was to find an easily programmable robot arm that also offered simple integration with a robot gripper as the end-of-arm tool.
Voodoo Manufacturing chose Universal Robots’ UR10 because of its seamless interface with a two-finger gripper from Robotiq. “We got the UR10 out of the box and were able to get it running, adding the gripper at the end of arm within just a few hours,” said Jonathan Schwartz, chief product officer of Voodoo Manufacturing. Programming the gripper was “almost like building a Powerpoint presentation,” Voodoo industrial automation engineer Charles Fenwick added.
The key to tripling output is the fact that the UR10 robot can run overnight. “We can monitor the robot through our own software and access the status of any given printer to see whether it’s printing or idle,” said Schwartz. “We can deploy this in our factory and run it 24/7 without any human oversight.” The CPO describes it as “magical” the first morning he came in to find more than 30 completed print runs handled by the UR10 overnight.
Competitive Advantages
Universal Robots’ leap of innovation makes industrial automation feasible and affordable for small and medium enterprises. The shift from complex to simple robotics is industry-changing.
“Voodoo Manufacturing is a great case study for our technology,” said Jürgen von Hollen, president of Universal Robots. “The sweet spot for our cobots is companies that need flexibility to manufacture in small batches. It used to be hard for these companies to compete with the efficiency of larger manufacturers. Now, when they see that robots can take 30 to 40 minutes to set up and can be repurposed simply, they understand the possibilities.”
SMES are the biggest drivers of most economies, von Hollen added. “Yet their technology decisions differ from those of larger companies. The static automation environment of the past won’t work for them. They don’t have time to take a longterm view of ROI. And while efficiency is the main driver for large manufacturers, SMES are interested in quality, innovation, and health and safety. Their work presents unique challenges. They need to meet market requirements fast, and that requires flexibility.”
Reshaping Automation
UR robots can automate myriad processes: assembly, painting, screw driving, labeling, injection molding, welding, packaging and polishing. They can quickly be repurposed— to create products and markets that may not even exist today.
“The UR robots free our employees from a lot of the tedious tasks that we currently do in our factory and move them into higher-value positions that require more critical thinking,” said Schwartz. “Over the past 30 years, manufacturing has left the United States mainly because of the very cheap labor costs overseas; but we feel that is changing with new technology such as this robotic arm. Now we can build a factory that can actually compete on cost with Chinese factories. In the next 10 years, we’re going to see manufacturing come back to the United States, and I predict an increase in manufacturing jobs available right here.”
Visit urrobots.com/voodoo to watch a video on how the UR10 robot triples Voodoo Manufacturing’s production output.
With collaborative robot technology, the future of manufacturing is simple, flexible and highly competitive.