Colleague Cobot coated

Brushing, spraying, painting - for hours on end and with the utmost precision: processing surfaces is monotonous and strenuous. Collaborative lightweight robots, or cobots for short, can relieve employees and free up valuable resources.

For many companies in Germany, the labor shortage is already part of everyday life. According to the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection, it is particularly affecting craft businesses, production and manufacturing, among others, and will continue to increase. Companies of all sizes therefore need to rethink and find alternatives in order to remain fit for the future. One option: automation with cobots. Unlike traditional industrial robots, these are small, lightweight and cost-efficient. They can also be integrated into ongoing operations quickly and without extensive programming knowledge. The lightweight robots now automate a wide range of tasks from machine loading to packaging and welding. They are also increasingly relieving workers from repetitive, physically strenuous and ergonomically unfavorable tasks in surface processing. Equipped with various sensors and cameras, these modern production assistants are now so sensitive that they can also be used for polishing, spraying or painting. This is shown by the example of the German company Beyerdynamic, based in Heilbronn.

Beyerdynamic GmbH is one of the few premium manufacturers of audio devices such as headphones, microphones and loudspeakers that produces its products almost exclusively in Germany - and for the most part by hand. What is highly regarded and trusted by customers worldwide is very expensive to produce. In order to continue producing profitably at its home base, Beyerdynamic uses two collaborative robots from Universal Robots (UR).

In its headphone production, Beyerdynamic automates a work step in which the membranes of the loudspeakers are refined by coating them with a dispersion medium. Before the cobots were used, three employees were responsible for this task. They applied the medium to the membrane by hand using a brush. "Of course, it is impossible for humans to always 'brush' evenly over a long period of time. At some point, one stroke becomes thicker and another thinner. As a result, the quality of our membranes varied greatly," explains Jörg Lang, production engineer at Beyerdynamic.

A UR3 and a UR5 from Universal Robots, named after their load capacity in kilograms, now support the three employees in membrane coating. The process was initially divided into two task areas: Handling and Spraying. For membrane coating, the first step involves a worker placing a welded headphone speaker on a predefined green surface. The handling robot, a UR5 with an integrated Robotiq Wrist Camera and a Robotiq 2-finger gripper, grasps the workpiece and picks up the speaker. It then places it on a rotary motor. There, a UR3 with an integrated spray gun takes over the spraying process and coats the membrane by spraying on the dispersion medium. The UR5 then places the coated speaker on a tray. As soon as this is fully loaded with workpieces, it moves it on independently to make room for new parts.

The use of the cobots increased productivity at Beyerdynamic by 50 percent within the application area, while at the same time improving the quality of the premium headphones. In addition, employees can devote more time to value-adding activities.

The example shows that cobots can improve efficiency and quality in production. At the same time, collaborative applications for surface processing give companies the flexibility to react appropriately to an increasingly volatile order situation and help them to remain competitive even in times of economic unrest. Last but not least, the use of this modern tool also increases employer attractiveness, which will be more important than ever in the future. (OM-6/24)