Automation Canada - Robotic Integration Issue - 17

TWO PORTRAITS OF THE LEAN INTEGRATOR CNT'D.
Vectis Automation: Focused on Welding
system-level product and by partnering with a single cobot provider-Universal Robots-to support it. Vectis can then add value by tailoring the
cobot, equipment, and software to the customer's application. The Vectis team's collective background in welding allows them to bring unique
expertise to customer application support and develop software targeted to welding fabricators. They know what makes a good weld, and they're
able to apply that knowledge to the cobot product kit.
The decision to partner with UR was a strategic one when Vectis launched. " We evaluated all the options and chose UR as our cobot supplier of
choice, " Pawley explains. " They pioneered the technology and have now had 10 years and tens of thousands of shipments to refine their
technology. Their products are robust both mechanically and electrically, and they are part of a mature support network. Additionally, UR offers us
the ability to tailor software to the application. "
Vectis' customers range from users who have never touched a robot to shops operating up to 20 traditional robotic welding cells. But they all
value cobots for their comparative ease of implementation, programming, and training. And with Vectis' help, cobot technology can be installed in
hours or days instead of weeks or months. One Vectis customer claims they were removing shrink-wrap from UR's product in the morning and were
in production on their own by the afternoon. " And that was a customer who never used robots, " says Pawley.

FUSION COBOTICS: FOCUSED ON CNC MACHINE TENDING
Located just southwest of Chicago, Fusion Cobotics didn't begin as a lean integrator. The company launched in 2002 to offer contract assembly
services to OEMs that wanted to outsource assembly of their legacy equipment. It wasn't until 2018 that someone on the production team
suggested using a UR cobot to tend Fusion's CNC machines. The cobot worked so well that Fusion added another and then another, until it
eventually leveraged its internal application expertise to create a new business model.
Today, Fusion helps small to medium-sized job shops focused on high-mix, low-volume applications to automate the tending of CNC mills and
lathes, as well as press brakes for sheet metal. Fusion partners exclusively with UR, which provides a familiar technology base that Fusion can tailor
to customer applications.
Even by lean integrator standards, Fusion's physical operation is small. It dedicates 15 by 15 feet of floor space and an engineering staff numbering
under 10 people to assemble and test a customer's system before installing it within weeks of the initial meeting. Such projects require an
investment between $60,000 and $150,000, depending on project size, but 80% are under $100,000, according to Craig Zoberis, Fusion's
president.
" UR's ecosystem enables everything we do to be menu driven, which is what makes us lean, " Zoberis says. " Basically, we offer four Universal
Robots products-the UR3e, UR5e, UR10e, and UR16e-that, like a suit, we tailor to your application and quickly deploy. "
UR's cobot technology effectively enabled Fusion to adopt its lean integrator business model. " We chose to partner with UR because they offered
the most proven ecosystem by virtue of their market share and the number of applications they've deployed, " Zoberis explains. " It also came down
to the software their tools integrate. The shell program is like an Excel sheet into which you add the values. It's much easier for us configure, reduces
training time for the customer, and allows the cobot to be up and running more quickly. "
C A N A D I A N A U TO M AT I O N

VOLUME 3, ISSUE 1

Automation Canada - Robotic Integration Issue

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