Vision Engineering
Production line solutions save on lead-times and costs
FANUC Robotics, one of the world’s leading companies in factory automation, has integrated cameras onto its robotic arms using additive manufacturing.
This “vision engineering system” effectively enables a robot to see an object’s location, orientation, measurement and identity giving the robot the flexibility to handle items of different shapes and size at the same time. On a fast-moving production line, the expensive camera can be vulnerable to damage. FANUC came to 3T-am looking for a housing that offered good protection whilst retaining quick access to the camera.
Oliver Selby, Design Engineer at FANUC Robotics says “By using polymer additive manufacturing, we have achieved more benefits than we originally anticipated. We have seen that we can rapidly produce lightweight and cost-effective parts and plan to extend our use of this technology.”
Automation companies across the UK are now starting to utilise additive manufactured products for low to medium volume applications as the materials and technology utilised become recognised as suitable for end use applications.
view PDF
We can rapidly produce lightweight and costeffective parts and plan to extend our use of this technology”
