Rösler UK adds cobot automation at customer experience centre
Rösler UK, the UK-based division of Rösler Oberflächentechnik GmbH, has installed a new collaborative robot (cobot) from Universal Robots at its customer experience centre (CEC) in Knowsley. The cobot has been integrated as a flexible loading and unloading resource servicing a range of mass finishing and blasting technologies.
Working alongside operators, it is intended to handle parts with consistent precision, presenting them to the machines in the correct orientation and sequence. According to Rösler UK, this improves process stability, reduces the risk of handling damage, and enables longer periods of uninterrupted operation, critical for customers looking to increase overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) and reduce labour-intensive tasks.
The Universal Robots cobot is coupled with an advanced vision system from Cambrian Robotics. Together they act as a scalable, high-level handling system capable of multiple materials. In practice, this enables scenarios such as handling a mixed stream of aluminium and steel components, as well as parts with more complex geometries, within the same cell. This allows part picking, placing and sorting without the need for segregated placement in advance.
Because the cobot/vision cell operates as a machine-agnostic handling solution, it can be flexibly connected to a wide variety of Rösler machines, allowing customers to automate across different finishing technologies as their needs evolve.
For visitors to the CEC, the cobot cell is intended to act as a tangible demonstration of how modern automation can be implemented in other production environments, showing how a cobot can be deployed for machine tending and workpiece manipulation in a compact footprint, with straightforward programming and rapid changeover between different part families. Rösler states that the installation reflects its approach to automation: that new technologies should slot into existing and future plant layouts with minimal restriction, supporting a phased, low-risk path to higher productivity.
“Many of our customers know they need to automate, but they’re unsure where to start,” says Dave Williams, Head of CEC at Rösler UK. “By running a cobot every day in the CEC (on real subcontract work, not just demos) we can show the productivity gains and quality improvements in a very concrete way, and help them visualise what’s possible in their own plants.”
The cobot is already being used on subcontract finishing projects, acting as added support that keeps machines fed while operators focus on higher-value tasks such as process optimisation, inspection, and changeovers.
