Carefree Bathing, a provider of bathroom equipments developed from glass-fiber-reinforced plastics, has deployed a Motoman-UP50-35 robot for automating various tasks involved in the secondary finishing stage of bath tub development.
The major constituent of a bath tub is a robust steel frame for avoiding distortions and water seepage. The tub is developed from spray resin and pieces of fibers having a thickness of 6 mm. The curing stage is followed by finishing stage in which the shell is placed in a robot cell featuring a six-axle Motoman-UP50-35 robot. The robot completes the milling and finishing tasks within 24 cycles. The robot’s hand carries a milling unit, which has a spindle operating at a high speed. Concurrently, apertures for the jet spa system are also made by the robot.
The company has reported that in contrast to the manual finishing operations, the cycle times have been reduced to 85% by the robot, thereby helping to avoid the production obstacles. In addition, the robot assures the quality of the final products, and this has greatly reduced the discard rate and time overhead.