Video: Universal Robots Polishing System Raises Production by 50%

For Paradigm Electronics, launching an immediately successful new finish on their speakers threw their production estimates for a loop. Because they make their products completely in-house, Paradigm made some clever decisions on how to accommodate the upswing in demand.

“In order to produce that finish, you have to apply multiple layers of lacquer and between each layered application, you have to sand and buff, sand and buff. There’s a lot of manual labor involved in that. The problem is to find people who can do that, we just couldn’t find enough skilled people,” says Director of Operations Oleg Bogdanov.

The company had one traditional robot with safety guarding installed previously and they found that the collaboration required between the robot and the operator was not compatible with that setup. It also took months to completely install at the facility. Paradigm employed a robotics expert to help evaluate their situation. As a newer technology, the contractor shined a light on collaborative robots as a solution.

“This kind of robot allowed us to have a human and a robot working in the same workspace. They’re now working in a pendulum type of an operation where they can safely interact, allowing the human to check whether the robot has done an adequate amount of work before the final polishing is handed over to the human. It’s a very hand-in-hand kind of operation,” says Phillips, emphasizing the simplicity of the robot cell. The collaborative robot installation was completed in 20% of the time required by the traditional robot cell.

“Once we realized that a collaborative robot was a viable alternative for us, we did our homework and checked around the rest of the opportunities that were out there from different manufacturers. We found that for our application, the UR robot was not only the best robot for the application, but it was also the most cost efficient,” says Phillips, mentioning the UR robots’ built-in, adjustable force mode feature as another deciding factor.

“If too much force is applied, the surface heats and the results go the opposite direction to what you’d hoped. So having the robot work with a specific force was a huge advantage. We were aware of technologies that allowed for a force feedback system but they were actually as expensive as the entire UR robot. So it was quite exciting to find that it had capabilities of force feedback within its inherent structure,” says Paradigm’s Manager of Production Services, who is excited about the possibilities for more UR robots.

The force-sensing technology in Universal Robots allows it to adapt to the characteristics of the item. When buffing and polishing, variations may occur where the robot’s ability to sense a change results in a higher quality finish than a standard robot with no ability to sense how much force is required to achieve the desired result.