Friday, March 29, 2024

Universal Robots’ new heavy-duty cobot speeds up automation

Universal Robots (UR), a leading manufacturer of collaborative robots (cobots) in the world, has unveiled its new UR16e, which boasts an impressive 16kg (35.3 lbs.) payload.

It is the company’s strongest cobot ever that combines high payload capacity with 900mm radius and +/- 0.05mm repeatability. This makes it ideal for automated tasks such as heavy-duty material handling, packaging, and palletizing, nut and screw driving, and high-payload and CNC machine tending.

Developed within Universal’s innovative e-Series Robots platform, the UR16e offers great benefits and features. It makes automation a fast and easy process. Programming and integration are elementary, depending on the capabilities and knowledge of the user.

Like the rest of the e-Series, the UR16e has built-in force sensing, 17 configurable safety functions, including customizable stopping time and stopping distance intuitive programming flow.

This powerhouse robot weighs around 33.1 kg (73 lbs) and can handle an exceptional 16 kg of payload that is especially useful for carrying heavy end of arm tooling and can lift multiple parts in a single pick, making tasks much more efficient by achieving shorter cycle times.

The other cobots in UR’s e-Series – the UR3e (its smallest robot), UR5e and UR10e – offer 3 kg (6.6 lbs), 5 kg (11 lbs) and 10 kg (22 lbs) payloads, respectively.

The company didn’t reveal the price of the new robot, saying only that it is about 10 percent higher than the price of the UR10e (around $50,000), according to IEEE Spectrum.

Unlike traditional automation, which is expensive, complex, and dangerous, Universal Robots provides manufacturers with various sizes of cobots that are easy to install and program and have zero interruption during workflows. Today, UR has more than 37,000 working cobots worldwide. They perform monotonous but also critical tasks in various aspects of the production environment.

The power and advanced features of the UR16e will be shown live for the first time this week at the China International Industry Fair, held in Shanghai (September 17-21, 2019).