Cobot unloads a brake press in six feet of floor space with no guarding

Commercial interiors, metal fixtures, shelving and heavy duty racking systems · Press brake tending · Vendor published

The job

At Etalex in Quebec, Canada, one employee unloaded a brake press by hand eight hours a day, reaching into the press area in a busy aisle where people walk past constantly and there was no room for safety guarding. Operations manager Jean Francois Rousseau had six feet of floor space in front of the machine and needed one solution to cover 10 different production cycles. Etalex fitted a Universal Robots UR10 with pneumatic suction cups; the press works holes in the parts and the robot then picks each piece and stacks it in a patterned pile on a cart. The remaining manual work is about an hour a day inspecting pallet quality and changing coils.

The shop

Universal Robots publishes a company size band of 100 to 500 employees and a 300,000 square foot production hall. The task the cobot replaced was one employee for eight hours a day. Etalex had 25 other robots on site at the time, all behind safety fencing, which makes this cell the exception rather than the house standard.

The equipment

Universal Robots UR10 with a pneumatic suction cup end effector, running unguarded in front of the brake press after a risk assessment approved by the Quebec occupational health and safety commission. A zone sensor was added voluntarily so the robot slows to 20 percent speed when an unknown object enters the workspace. Press brake make and model not published. No regrip station; the cobot unloads and stacks only, it does not sequence bends.

The published numbers

Manual labor on the task reduced from eight hours a day to about one hour a day of inspection and coil changing, roughly seven man hours per day freed, published-by-vendor. Estimated ROI of about 12 months, published-by-vendor, presented as an estimate with no cell cost or labor rate published. 40 percent increase in sales, published-by-vendor and attributed by the customer to automation across the plant generally rather than to this cell. Cell had to serve 10 different production cycles and fit within 6 feet of space, published-by-vendor. Cycle time and parts per hour for this cell not published. Scrap reduction not published. Headcount reduction: none, the company states no layoffs resulted.

Where a source did not publish a figure, this entry says so rather than guessing.

What we would check before believing it applies to you

This is unloading only, which is the easy half of press brake automation: flat rigid blanks, vacuum cups, and a fixed stacking pattern, with no bend sequencing, no regrip and no interaction with tooling, which is precisely why a 10 kg cobot could do it inside six feet of floor space. Do not carry the 12 month ROI over to a full bending cell, because a robot that loads, bends, reorients between hits and unloads is a different and much harder project, and note that this same plant left its 25 heavier duty robots caged. The whole job stands or falls on vacuum grip, so before assuming the same result get a picking trial on your dirtiest real stock; oil, mill scale, perforations, slots and thin gauge all attack suction cup reliability in ways clean sample parts will never reveal. The unguarded layout is jurisdiction specific: Quebec approved it after a risk assessment, and a US shop still owes its own ANSI/RIA R15.06 and ISO/TS 15066 assessment, with force and pressure measurements, before assuming an unguarded aisle side cell will pass. Treat the 40 percent sales increase as the weakest number in the story; a cobot unloading one brake press does not cause a 40 percent sales increase, and the customer says as much by crediting automation broadly.

Sources