When it was faced with increasing demand for specialised parts, the US company Whippany Actuation Systems — based in New Jersey — considered three options: purchase a new CNC machine, out-source production or introduce automation based on a universal robot system. The company selected the latter.
Whippany, which makes electro-mechanical actuation systems for the aerospace and defence industries, needed to increase production quickly. Preferring to manufacture in-house but not wanting to make a significant investment in a new CNC machine, it started looking for a robot that could tend the existing machines and give unattended running overnight.
Phil DeMauro, Whippany’s manager of manufacturing engineering, contacted Universal Robots (
www.universal-robots.com). “We were looking for a solution that could be implemented and programmed easily and didn’t require the traditional guarding and safety that other robots required.
“The ability to move the robot from one cell to another was also a requirement; now, we just need to pop a couple of locating pins in the floor and get up and running.”
Integration of the robot to the gear shaper’s CNC was straightforward. Whippany had an outside integrator come in and help wire the interface between the machine and the robot. With its CNC machines able to run additional unattended shifts, the company’s goal of increased production capacity has been achieved.
Mr DeMauro expects ROI on the robot in little under one year; he also says that the additional production capacity the company now has will allow him to bring more work back in-house.