New for old: There is gold in the long-established injection molding factory.

the whole-process injection molding manufacturers successively introduced large production automation equipment into their production lines.

The plastic injection molding factory in Taiwan introduced 4 EC66 cobots into its production line, which are mainly responsible for the loading and unloading of the injection molding machine. It not only turns to automation in a single station, but also solves the labor shortage caused by factors such as noise and poor working environment in the factory, and reduces potential safety risks in the factory.

01 Background

This medium-sized company in Taiwan is a whole-process injection molding manufacturer that provides one-stop manufacturing. Over the past 8 years, it has been focusing on the R&D and optimization of the injection molding technology. It is committed to providing high-quality products to the end users of mainstream fitness equipment brands in Europe and North America. With years of development, the client feels the pressure in production line automation. On the one hand, they hope to continue to achieve the goal of stable quality and mass production expansion. On the other hand, the flexibility of the production line and the small amount of diverse customized requirements put forward higher demands on factory automation and flexibility.

02 Pain point

In recent years, the client has successively introduced large production automation equipment into their production lines. There are also a number of long-used equipment still in service in the factory. The intermixing of new and old equipment makes the space of the production line very tight. The automatic processing equipment for industrial use generates much noise when it is running. When operators walk through the equipment, they not only have to endure the loud noise, but also may encounter safety risks. For example, due to the harsh working environment and boring and repetitive job content, the company fails to recruit suitable personnel to take care of injection molding machines. Especially when there is a periodic surge in orders, workers will resign because of huge working pressure, causing a serious labor shortage in the factory. Therefore, it is difficult for companies to cope with such higher elastic production demand due to increased production. It has also become their driving force to keep seeking automation solutions.

Conventional XYZ horizontal-axis robots are used for the loading and unloading of injection molding. However, the client cannot use this traditional solution on site. In addition to limited space and safety considerations during human-machine interaction, another important reason is that the action of the robot is complicated when removing the material: The robot needs to maintain a certain posture to reach a certain angle during operation. After that, the robot has to further shear the material head. The cartesian coordinate robot cannot achieve these. Therefore, the client turned to other solutions.

03 Solution

Through the distributor of ELITE Robot in Taiwan, the client has learned that the 6-joint cobot can solve the above-mentioned pain points. According to the plan, a cobot arm with a 6kg load capacity is selected, which can be arranged on one side of the injection molding machine without installing a safety fence. The single joint of the ELITE Robot cobot supports ±360° rotation. It can flexibly reach the preset waypoint during the process of taking out the material. In this project, the client can accept an ROI period of 1.5 years. Because compared to a single investment of robots, such established injection molding factories generally face the difficulty in recruiting workers with an urgent need to transform old production lines. Therefore, they have a strong motivation for automation projects. In the actual operation process, what surprised the client is that the cobot solution of ELITE Robot further shortened the ROI period to 12 months.

It is worth mentioning that the introduction of cobot technology in injection molding factories is very rare, which can be regarded as a great leap forward for such long-established factories. The production line employees do not have a professional background and they are generally very unfamiliar with the use of cobots. "Therefore, after the introduction, it is necessary to actively cultivate the site environment to help users understand the simple features of cobot programming, familiarize themselves with cobot operations, and enhance the confidence of frontline personnel." For this project, Director Zeng, the distributor in charge, expressed his opinion.

In the future, the client hope to make up for the worker shortage by introducing safe and flexible cobots. The use of cobots can achieve human-machine coexistence, which will redistribute human resources of the production line, optimize the production efficiency, reduce the risk of occupational injuries, and create a more friendly and secure working environment for employees. The value of cobots is worth looking forward to.