NEU solves labor shortage with ActiNav system
New England Union Company (NEU) is a family-owned foundry and machine shop that produces brass-threaded pipe fittings for plumbing and marine applications. NEU replaced its outdated equipment with modern CNC machines, but staffing its production floor remains a challenge in Rhode Island.
To address the labor shortage and increase cycle time, the company deployed a UR10e cobot and the ActiNav picking system from Universal Robots (UR), which operate unattended all night. With ActiNav, NEU can increase output with the same number of employees.
Upgrading the shop from old lathes to modern CNC machines improved product quality but also lengthened cycle times. This affected deliveries and prevented the effective use of valuable machinists. NEU needed to increase production volume without adding shifts, and the company wanted to automate less specialized tasks so employees could move into more important roles, such as setting up CNC machines, and spend more time on inspection and quality.
In the first project with the collaborative robot, NEU used the UR10e cobot and its built-in pallet-loading function to pick parts from an organized tray and feed them into the gantry system of a CNC machine, which performs threading, drilling and other operations. The UR10e arm can lift up to 12.5 kg with a maximum reach of 1300 mm.
It took an employee about an hour to load the ordered batch onto the tray, while the cobot could run for about eight hours without human involvement. The company needed a system that could run all night without an operator. NEU Vice President Brent Petty explored vibratory systems, but they could not meet NEU's repeatability requirements. That is when he came across ActiNav.
“The advantage of the ActiNav system is that we can simply bring the bin right up to the device, set it up, and it starts picking directly from the bin. We don't need an employee standing there, picking parts and placing them into the pallet system we had prepared in advance”
In 2021, UR received the RBR50 award for robotics innovation for its ActiNav system. The UR+ "plug-and-produce" application kit simplifies cobot deployment for common applications. The ActiNav system requires a UR5e or UR10e cobot, an end effector of the user's choice, and a frame or fixture for the specific application. The kit includes ActiNav software and an autonomous motion module controller, URCap user interface software, and several 3D sensors.
The ActiNav system can handle vision processing, collision-free motion planning and real-time control of the autonomous robot. Autonomous picking is a common robotics application, but it is rarely, if ever, described as "easy to use". Deploying autonomous picking systems typically requires integration and programming that customers cannot do themselves.
ActiNav changes this, since it requires no programming skills to deploy. ActiNav uses teach-by-demonstration with a setup wizard on the cobot's pendant. UR says the system can be deployed in less than two hours.
During day shifts, employees can quickly refill the bin as needed and then return to other tasks. At the end of the day, workers simply bring a full bin to the ActiNav system, check the standard, start it and go home for the night. The bin holds enough parts for the robot and CNC machine to run unattended all night, and in the morning employees return to the finished-parts bins. They inspect the latest part, move the completed bin to inventory, fill it with raw parts, and let the robot continue working.
The ActiNav system first performs a 3D scan of the bin, then the UR-10e cobot uses a Robotiq Hand-E gripper to pick a raw part and place it into a re-fixturing device. The UR robot activates the device to vibrate the part so it aligns perfectly for loading into the gantry system, which is an intermediate system in the CNC machine. On a signal from the machine, the robot takes the finished part from the gantry system, dips it in water to wash off coolant, and drops the part into a tray for finishing. The robot then returns to the clamping fixture to grab a correctly oriented raw part and places it into the gantry system for loading into the CNC machine before restarting the cycle.
NEU currently works with 10 different parts in the ActiNav system but plans to expand to 30 different parts. ActiNav will run 24 hours a day, five days a week, allowing NEU to increase output to meet demand with the same number of employees.
“The ActiNav system has a large container with enough parts loaded into it, and we don't have to worry about it stopping. It can run all night. We come back to finished parts, and that's great”
