In short

August Manser AG is using a lightweight collaborative robot for the first time in the company’s fifty-year history. The KR1410 is used for grinding large acrylic sheets. The Swiss company, which is based in the canton of St. Gallen, acquired the cobots directly from Kassow Robots’ sales partner Swiss Cobots, which also assisted with the deployment.August Manser AG specializes in the precision manufacturing and assembly of component groups and entire systems, as well as the associated services. Its customers operate in industries such as semiconductors, mechanical engineering and optics—sectors that demand the very highest quality from their suppliers.

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Challenge

The SME is growing and wants to secure its growth for the future. When performed manually, grinding requires employees to perform monotonous and ergonomically suboptimal movements for hours on end.This is a extremely demanding job that is not very popular among employees andfinding people to do it is difficult. What is more, robots are available 24/7 andcan work at any time of the day or night. In addition, August Manser AG would rather engage its employees in tasks with higher added value that gives them the chance to continue developing their skills.

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Solution

A 7-axis cobot KR1410 mounted on the ceiling at August ManserAG is now responsible for grinding acrylic sheets up to 2.1 meters long and 1.9meters wide. By automating the process, the cobot ensures consistent grindingresults, requiring every square millimeter of the sheet to be ground from glossy to matte finish. Depending on the size of the sheets, the grinding process can take anywhere from 30 minutes to one and a half hours.

After testing models from variou swell-known cobot manufacturers, the company decided that the KR1410 from Kassow Robots offered the best solution. It has 7 axes, weighs just 38 kilograms, has a range of up to 1,400 millimeters, and offers a load capacity of up to ten kilograms. The robot has been equipped with a sander from OnRobot. It is only thanks to the Kassow Robots lightweight robot’s 7th axis that even large sheet scan be ground completely using a single, very compact cobot.

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Benefits

The combination of a ceiling-mounted7-axis lightweight robot with an additional 8th linear axis—a Manser in-house design—offers numerous benefits for August Manser AG: any sizes, right up to very large ones, can be processed with a single cobot, ensuring consistent quality. The cobot also provides time flexibility because it can also continue working after hours, and can even be used during night shifts if necessary. Another advantage is that employees who have working on this time-consuming grinding process can now be reassigned to more engaging and motivating jobs.

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