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Maximize Human Potential in CNC Machining Operations

Problem

Fusion OEM is a small machine shop in the Chicago area. Named one of Forbes’ top 25 small American companies in 2017, it has always aimed to stay ahead of the game through innovation. But recruiting a good machinist in the Chicago area is a tough task for any machine shop.

Solution

Head machinist Davin Erickson saw a video of a collaborative robot tending a CNC machine on social media and immediately set about convincing CEO Craig Zoberis to buy one. Now—one year later—Fusion OEM has four Universal Robots equipped with Robotiq’s Hand-E Adaptive Grippers, Force Copilot software for simple force control programming, and Insights monitoring software to improve production capacity.

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Products they use

Insights

Force Copilot

Hand-E Adaptive Gripper

Applications

Machine Tending

<div>“I can spend more time programming machines since I don’t have to load them. Plus, there’s more consistency in the loading. It’s taken away some of the human error.”</div>

Brian Wrobleski Machinist

“I wish I had read Lean Robotics earlier. We have learned to start simple, get small wins, and stop over-complicating things. This book is our bible now.”

Craig Zoberis Chief Executive Officer

“Insights helps us maximizes runtime, and we get a much better profit margin on the job.”

Ken Chess Chief Operating Officer

“With just one or two lines of code through Force Copilot, we let the software generate all the part positioning.”

Jacob Miller Engineering Manager

<div>“Comparing industrial robots to cobots is like night and day. Now we talk about each program in terms of minutes, rather than hours.”</div>

Chris Wenzel Production Supervisor

<div>“Running a job on a given machine with Universal Robots and Robotiq is four times cheaper than operating manually.”</div>

Ken Chess Chief Operating Officer

By the numbers

4

Robots

Fusion OEM deployed four collaborative robots within a year

4

Times

Cheaper to run the same job with a collaborative robot than a human worker