What collaborative robotics is for and when it is truly useful
In recent years, we have heard more and more about collaborative robotics (or collaborative robots) and how they can improve productivity, quality, and safety in industrial processes. However, navigating the world of collaborative robotics is not always easy: between cobots, industrial robots, and new technologies, understanding which solution is truly suited to your needs can be complicated.
Investing in automation without knowing the characteristics of the different technologies means running the risk of choosing a solution poorly suited to your production process, resulting in unnecessary costs and results below expectations.
Do you want to understand what collaborative robotics is really for and in which applications it can make a difference?
In this article, you will discover the main advantages of collaborative robots, when they represent the best choice, and why, in certain processes such as those typical of a foundry, it may be more effective to opt for other automation solutions.
The goal is not to establish which technology is best in absolute terms, but to understand which one is most suitable for your specific case. Because an effective automation project does not start with the choice of the robot, but with the analysis of the production process.
At Trebi, we believe that the market and the process indicate which technology to use, beyond fashions, new products, and temporary trends.
What collaborative robotics is and in which contexts you could benefit from using cobots
In recent years, collaborative robotics has taken on an increasingly important role in industrial automation. Collaborative robots were developed to meet those needs that industrial robots could not fulfill. The Cobot was created to go where the industrial robot cannot. But it is not that simple: today, in many applications, cobots could be alternatives to industrial robots.
Informing yourself before investing is always the best choice. Understanding the characteristics of the different technologies allows you to identify the solution most suitable for your needs and avoid investments that might not bring the expected benefits.
To understand if collaborative robotics could represent an opportunity for your company, it is useful to start with a simple question: what really is a collaborative robot?
Also known by the acronym cobot (collaborative robot), these robots are designed to work in proximity to the operator and, in certain applications, share the same workspace. Thanks to dedicated control systems and integrated safety functions, they can limit force and speed when necessary, promoting safe and controlled human-machine collaboration.
Their main characteristics are ease of programming, flexibility, generally compact dimensions, and the possibility of being quickly reconfigured for new productions. These qualities make them particularly interesting for companies managing small batches, variable productions, or frequent tooling changes.
Today, collaborative robots are successfully used in numerous industrial sectors. In addition to the medical and electronics sectors, they find application in the manufacturing industry for assembly, screwdriving, quality control, packaging, light palletizing, and component handling.
One of the applications that has seen significant growth in recent years is machine tending, which is the automatic loading and unloading of machine tools such as CNC machining centers, lathes, grinders, and measuring machines. In this context, the cobot can support the operator in the most repetitive tasks, keeping the machine in production even during breaks or unmanned shifts and helping to increase the plant’s productivity.
In many machine tending applications, the collaborative robot can also communicate with the machine tool, manage part feeding systems, integrate with computer vision systems, and ensure continuous production with constant cycle times. For this reason, it represents a solution increasingly adopted by machine shops that wish to increase efficiency without completely revolutionizing their production layout.
In operations that require precision, repeatability, and frequent production changes, such as assembly, screwdriving, or some welding applications, cobots can help improve work quality, reduce errors, and increase production efficiency.
The growing spread of collaborative robotics is also closely linked to the principles of Industry 5.0, where the goal is not to replace the operator, but to enhance their skills by entrusting the robot with the most repetitive, ergonomically taxing, or low-value-added tasks.
It is important to remember, however, that collaborative robots do not represent the ideal solution for every industrial process. In this article, we provide an analysis (and some advice) regarding a specific sector: we are talking about collaborative robotics in the foundry.
In our experience, the correct question is not “Do I need a cobot?”, but rather “What is the most suitable technology for my production process?”
Every application has different needs in terms of precision, cycle times, force, safety, productivity, and return on investment. For this reason, the choice of robot should always be a consequence of the process analysis and not the starting point of the project.
At Trebi, we use both industrial robots and collaborative robots.
By turning to Trebi, you will not find a supplier limited by a pre-determined choice of one technology over another! The choice does not depend on the latest technology or market trends, but on the actual characteristics of the application.
In machine tending, for example, a cobot can represent an extremely effective solution when it is necessary to automate the loading and unloading of a machine tool with rapid installation, compact dimensions, and frequent production changes.
When, instead, the process requires high speeds, heavy loads, or demanding tasks, such as deburring and metal finishing, a traditional industrial robot often remains the most high-performing solution.
For this reason, every Trebi project always starts from the analysis of the part, the production process, and the customer’s objectives, identifying the technology that offers the best balance between productivity, quality, safety, and flexibility.
Another very important aspect to pay attention to when talking about collaborative robotics is the application.
A collaborative robot alone is not enough for a safe solution. You need to look at the machine as a whole and verify if it can truly be collaborative.
Why the human-machine interface is not the ideal solution for metal deburring
This does not mean that collaborative robotics has no place within a foundry or a machine shop.
On the contrary, collaborative robots can represent an excellent solution for handling, machine tending, quality control, or component manipulation. However, when it comes to deburring, grinding, degating, and metal finishing, completely different requirements come into play.
If your goal is to automate finishing processes in the foundry, it is essential to carefully evaluate which technology to adopt. Although cobots offer numerous advantages in many industrial applications, in the most demanding processes they do not, in most cases, represent the most effective solution.
The reason is simple: collaborative robots are designed to promote interaction with the operator and prioritize aspects such as safety, flexibility, and ease of use. Typical foundry finishing processes instead require different characteristics.
Operations such as degating, belt sanding, and grinding generate high forces on the tool and require robots with a particularly rigid structure, high load capacity, and dynamics that allow for maintaining precision and repeatability even during intensive work cycles.
To obtain consistent results, choosing the correct robot is not enough. It is necessary to design the entire machining process: tools, clamping systems, machining strategies, control software, and parameter management must be developed as a single system. Only at this point will we be able to understand, for the specific project, whether collaborative robotics can be integrated or not.
A concrete example where, to date, collaborative robotics might not be the best solution.
Those who work in foundries are well aware of the critical issues of manual deburring: variable cycle times, inconsistent quality, rework, scrap, and demanding working conditions due to dust, noise, vibrations, and part handling.
Automating this phase means increasing operator safety, improving the quality of the finished product, standardizing production, and achieving greater predictability of the entire process.
It must be said, however, that in recent years collaborative robotics has also evolved rapidly. Today, there are cobots with increasingly high load capacities and much higher performance than in the past. Therefore, this challenges everything said before. To get an idea of the future role that collaborative robotics could have, it is useful to read this article (in English, but the numbers and graphs are immediately understandable)
However, when evaluating a collaborative application, one must not focus exclusively on the robot. The entire production process must be analyzed.
A collaborative robot may indeed be technically capable of performing a certain task, but this does not automatically mean that the application can be truly collaborative.
A concrete example is the deburring of aluminum castings. During processing, dust can develop which, under certain conditions, requires compliance with ATEX regulations. In these cases, the cell design must take into account not only the robot but also the extraction systems, protections, installed equipment, and the entire plant architecture.
For this reason, in metal deburring and finishing applications, the choice tends to avoid solutions based on collaborative robotics and still very often falls on fully automated robotic cells equipped with traditional industrial robots.
There is still the possibility of using the cobot inside a closed deburring cell. In this way, the advantages of the cobot (compactness, collaborativeness) are used while also taking into account the safety necessary for the application itself. Therefore, the market is now moving towards the use of cobots within robotic cells that normally use industrial robots.
These are the industrial robots you should use in the foundry
Foundry deburring machines and metal finishing machines are designed to operate fully automatically, within protected areas, ensuring high levels of safety, precision, and production continuity.
When the goal is to achieve high performance in finishing processes, the most suitable robot is generally an industrial anthropomorphic robot, designed to develop high machining forces, maintain significant structural rigidity, and easily handle even large parts or those with particularly complex geometries.
These characteristics allow for tackling demanding processes such as deburring, degating, grinding, and belt sanding while maintaining constant quality even during continuous work cycles.
The insertion of a robotic cell, if carefully designed, also allows for entrusting operators with higher value-added activities, reducing exposure to the heaviest, most repetitive, and wearing tasks and significantly improving the working environment.
The advantages deriving from the introduction of industrial robotics, however, do not only concern safety.
An automated process allows for standardizing cycle times, planning production with greater precision, reducing the variability typical of manual processing, and decreasing the number of reworks and scrap. The result is a more uniform quality of the finished product and greater reliability in deliveries.
Read also: (Definitive) solutions for metal deburring in industrial processes
Modern robotic cells are managed by advanced software that controls every phase of the process, integrating, when necessary, computer vision systems, tool control, monitoring of process parameters, and data collection for continuous production optimization.
At Trebi, the robot represents only one of the elements of the robotic cell. The final result also depends on the design of the work unit, the choice of tools, the machining strategies, the control software, and the integration with other systems in the production line.
It is precisely the balance between all these elements that determines the quality of the processing, productivity, plant reliability, and return on investment.
In recent years, we have seen many companies approach the world of collaborative robotics and specifically ask for a cobot because it is considered the most innovative solution. In practice, however, it often happens that, after the process analysis, a completely different solution emerges.
In some cases, the collaborative robot actually represents the best choice, with collaborative robotics being the choice of preference for that specific application. In other cases, a traditional industrial robot guarantees greater productivity, precision, and operational continuity.
For this reason, every project should always start from the analysis of the part to be processed, the production process, and the company’s objectives, not from the choice of the robot.
Collaborative robotics: our conclusions
Choosing the most suitable robot does not mean identifying the most innovative model or the one with the best technical characteristics on paper. Choosing collaborative robotics because it is trendy cannot become an a priori choice. It means finding the solution that truly meets the needs of your production process.
Every application has different characteristics and requires a careful evaluation of numerous factors: type of part, cycle times, desired level of automation, required quality, operating conditions, safety, and return on investment.
For this reason, there is no one-size-fits-all solution, and therefore collaborative robotics is not a solution for everything or everyone either.
Automation represents a major investment that must translate into increased productivity, consistent quality, safety for operators, and long-term competitiveness.
For over forty years at Trebi, we have been designing robotic systems for metal finishing and also creating solutions dedicated to machine tending, machine tool support, and other industrial automation applications.
This experience has taught us one thing: there is no perfect robot, but there is the most suitable solution for every application.
This is why we always analyze the part, the production process, and the customer’s objectives before designing a plant, choosing each time whether to integrate collaborative robotics or a traditional industrial robot.
Read also: Metal deburring: this is the most efficient and complete method
Do you want to understand which solution is most suitable for your foundry? Do you want to understand if collaborative or traditional robotics is better for increasing the productivity of your industrial process? Contact us at the references below.
