Having worked in industry for 10 years, Jesper Larsen decided to go it alone. In April 2016, he set up Vivo Production in Denmark, invested in two CNC machines and established what is now a very successful sub-contracting business.

Production ranged from batch work through to prototypes, typically for the wind power and offshore industries.

Although he was working alone, his company’s reputation grew, as did its order intake, and Mr Larsen was soon struggling to keep up with demand.

He decided to buy another CNC machine but wanted to avoid the cost of bringing more people into the business, at least in the short term, so the ‘helping hand’ he chose instead was a UR10 from the Danish company Universal Robots (www.universal-robots.com).

Mr Larsen said: “I toyed with the idea of getting a robot to load parts into the machine rather than hiring someone, and opted for a cheaper CNC machine plus a UR10 for machine tending. It’s like an extra operator feeding blanks into the machine.”

When working on larger batches, the UR10 robot runs non-stop from 7am to 11pm; and during periods of very high demand, it also operates over the weekend, shutting down automatically when it is out of blanks.

“It never gets tired and works round the clock; it is also very flexible and can be quickly re-set it for different components — and even completely different tasks. Moreover, it paid for itself within a year.”

The company has continued to grow and now has four employees, more CNC machines, a wider customer base and a constant stream of new orders.