What changed when a 54 person molder put one cobot on wheels and ran a station 24/7

October 1, 2026 · 3 min read

At AIM Processing in Colorado a worker sat at a tray station and moved a tray every 90 seconds for a cartesian robot, working a couple of seconds per cycle, 40 hours a week. A UR5e on a mobile platform now does it around the clock and moves to two other jobs. The vendor publishes a fourfold output increase and payback inside 15 weeks.

The short answer

A high mix molder with 1,300 parts for more than 100 customers could not justify a dedicated caged cell for any one job, so one station stayed manual and ran 40 hours a week. A collaborative arm on a cart now runs it 24/7 and is rolled to two other applications. The vendor publishes a 400 percent output increase and an owner's statement that the robot paid for itself within 15 weeks. The account below is the maker's own case story, so read every number as the vendor published it, not as an audited result.

What the job looked like before

A worker sat at the palletizing station and every 90 seconds moved a tray into position for an existing cartesian robot that palletizes small parts into compartments, spending only a couple of seconds actually working each cycle. Because no single application justified a dedicated cell, the station ran about 40 hours a week and the rest of the time it did not run at all.

What they put in

A Universal Robots UR5e on a mobile platform, a Robotiq wrist camera that reads a QR code on each tray for orientation, a Robotiq two finger gripper and an in-house pneumatic gripper, and a Flexxbotics mechanical mating assembly so the arm returns to a known origin at each station and stored programs land within 0.5 millimeters without re-teaching. Signals pass through the robot's 24 volt I/O with no external PLC. The same cobot also picks parts off a conveyor into boxes and tends an injection molding machine.

What changed, in their numbers

Output productivity up fourfold, stated as a 400 percent increase. ROI inside 15 weeks, with the owner stating the robot had paid for itself after the fifth run of the first application. The station went from 40 hours a week to 24/7. Placement accuracy required: 0.5 millimeters. More than a dozen applications launched since. All published by the vendor. Headcount change, scrap, cell cost and cycle time were not published.

What this does not tell you

It does not publish the cell cost, and nothing says whether the 15 week figure includes the camera, grippers, mating hardware or engineering time. A plant already running three shifts would see almost none of the 400 percent, because the gain is hours, not speed. And the cobot only handles trays; a separate cartesian robot does the actual part picking, which is the harder problem.

What to verify in your own plant

Whether your floor, cart and fixtures can actually hold a mobile arm to a known origin, because a redeploy that needs two hours of re-teaching destroys the premise. How many hours a week the station runs today, which caps the availability gain. And whether the second and third applications you have in mind are really within one arm's reach and payload.

Sources: https://www.universal-robots.com/case-stories/aim-processing/

Describe the station you would put a roaming arm on to Joe, the concierge on this site, and it will tell you whether the gain is hours or speed, and what the mating hardware has to do.

Related on this site

Read the 400 percent as an availability gain from running 24/7 instead of 40 hours, not a speed gain. The engineering that made it work is a mechanical mating plate, not the arm.

Put it to the test on your own job

Tell Joe what you are running and he will apply this to your numbers, including telling you when a robot is the wrong answer.

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