One of the concerns of managers when starting to apply robotic arms is the assembly process. When it comes to assembling industrial robotic arms, most people probably think of confusion, complexity and laboriousness. However, collaborative industrial robots (cobots) have broken those stereotypes. In addition to superior production efficiency, safety, or greater flexibility than traditional industrial robots, quick deployment and assembly are also a great advantage of collaborative robots and bring many benefits to businesses. Let's take a closer look at how collaborative robots are easily assembled and deployed and how they benefit businesses.

WEAKNESSES IN DEPLOYING AND ASSEMBLY OF TRADITIONAL INDUSTRIAL ROBOT ARMS

Industrial robots have the advantage of high-volume and high-speed production. However, this is also a weakness when they have to be large in size to be able to handle this large amount of work well.

Due to their large size and bulkiness, the deployment and assembly of traditional industrial robots is often complicated, time-consuming and may require experts with knowledge and skills.

STRENGTHS IN ASSEMBLY OF COLLABORATIVE ROBOT ARMS

Collaborative robots have many strengths in deployment and assembly. With a compact robot arm design, not taking up much space and not needing to set up cumbersome protective fences (after risk assessment), collaborative robots can be deployed quickly and flexibly without affecting the existing production floor layout.

Collaborative robots can be deployed quickly and flexibly without affecting existing manufacturing floor layouts

In addition, with the increasingly volatile business market, customers' increasing demands, products requiring more customization, or the recent Covid-19 pandemic, a collaborative robot that can be quickly assembled and redeployed will help businesses quickly and promptly respond to market fluctuations while still optimizing costs.

COLLABORATIVE ROBOT ARM ASSEMBLY STEPS

It can be said that assembling a collaborative robot arm is extremely simple and quick without requiring the installer to have any previous experience in robot installation.

Assembling the collaborative robot arm is extremely simple and quick, without requiring the installer to have any previous experience with robot installation

With the UR collaborative robot arm, manufacturing facilities can perform simple and quick assembly in the following 3 steps:

• Attach the collaborative robot arm to the desired surface. The collaborative robot arm can be installed extremely flexibly on a variety of surfaces such as: tables, trolleys, ceilings, walls or on linear axes depending on the application and makes it easy to redeploy. The operator simply screws and attaches the collaborative robot arm to the desired surface. Thanks to its compact and lightweight size, this job can be completed quickly with just 1 to 2 people. Even with collaborative robot models such as the UR3e or UR5e, which weigh only 3kg and 5kg, sometimes only 1 person is needed to do this job.

With collaborative robot models like the UR3e or UR5e, weighing only 3kg or 5kg, sometimes only one person is needed to do the assembly work

• Connecting the control box to the power source: The collaborative robot comes with a control box that connects to the robot's teaching arm. The control box is also quite compact (about 15kg), can be easily picked up with one hand and flexibly moved to another location. No special power source or complicated electrical equipment is required, all you need to do is simply connect the control box to a common power source available at the production facility.
• Connecting the collaborative robot arm to the control box: The final step is to simply connect the collaborative robot arm to the control box, press the robot's teaching arm start button and start programming for the first task.

The time from assembly of the collaborative robot arm to the first task is only about an hour, and these assembly steps can be carried out smoothly and quickly with just two or even one operator.

In addition, the attachment of the grippers to the robot arm is extremely quick and simple, just like assembling the robot arm. With a plug and play mechanism, the grippers can be quickly installed and launched within minutes.

Mounting the grippers to the robot arm is as quick and simple as mounting the robot arm

With the UR+ platform, Universal Robots now offers hundreds of quality-assured grippers from reputable manufacturers such as Robotic or Stick that can be quickly and easily integrated into the UR collaborative robot arm.

HELP IS ALWAYS AVAILABLE

Assembling a collaborative robot arm is incredibly quick and easy, but there is always support available when you need it. In addition to on-site support for your first deployment, you can find a wealth of resources on collaborative robot arm assembly and robot programming on the Universal Robots website.

Article source: universal-robots.com