Sanding Cobot Delivers 40% Increase in Throughput

Andrew Pearce Bowls

In short

Vermont manufacturer of wooden tableware has successfully deployed a UR5e collaborative robot to handle the finish sanding of cutting boards. The new robot colleague, named ‘Sandrew’ by the staff, has delivered a 40% increase in the production throughput, which resulted in the robot paying itself back in just two months.

The business transformation

Andrew Pearce Bowls started looking into automation as a manual sander was promoted to a finish turner, leaving open a position that turned out to be challenging to fill. “It’s hard to recruit somebody to stand at a downdraft table and sand cutting boards for eight hours,” says Alex Drew, application engineer at Andrew Pearce Bowls. “Sanding was really becoming the choke point in our production.”

Andrew Pearce Bowls

Industry Woodworking

Country United States

Number of Employees 25

Cobots used UR5e

Watch what benefits the UR5e cobot delivered at Andrew Pearce Bowls

The solution

The team met with Universal Robots distributor Motion AI (former Axis New England) that showed them how the robots handle sanding tasks.

“We realized that by having a robot taking over the sanding, it just becomes another tool that does not replace any of the Old-World techniques that we use in our handwork,” says Mike Welch, production manager at Andrew Pearce Bowls.

The collaborative robots (cobots) from Universal Robots (UR) were not the only automation option Andrew Pearce Bowls considered. “We ended up with UR cobots because of the non-proprietary software and the digital and analog outputs that allowed us to add additional peripherals in the process of fixturing and tooling,” says Welch.

“And ultimately, the online teaching and learning through UR, Robotiq, and our local provider, Axis New England, gave us a lot of resources so we felt comfortable we weren’t going to be left out in the dry not knowing how to operate this.”

UR+ products used:
Airpick gripper - Robotiq
Sanding Kit- Robotiq
Flexx Reference - Flexxbotics

Two months ROI and 40% increase in throughput

Andrew Pearce’s production manager has looked closely at the metrics of how his UR5e cobot is performing. “We essentially end up saving about 20% of time the sander would spend on the board handling the finish sanding,” he explains. “It’s not replacing them, it’s just cutting down the amount of time that they’re taking getting it from a rough to a finished product, which translates to about 40% increase in throughput.”

Looking at the company’s all-in costs of the robot and implementation, Welch estimates that the return on investment (ROI) on the robot is about two months. “The UR robot has become very integral in our business plan this year,” he says. “We grew by over 20%, so we are hoping to continue that growth next year, and having the UR application is going to help us achieve that.”

Watch how the team at Andrew Pearce Bowls programmed the entire sanding cycle in-house

Sanding application programmed in-house

The UR5e is equipped with Robotiq’s UR+ certified AirPick gripper and Sanding Kit. Included in the kit are air control accessories, orbital tool, sanding media, software controlling the UR cobot’s force/torque sensor, and a mounting bracket, all controlled through a “URCap”; a software handshake between peripherals and the UR cobot arm, accessible directly through the cobot’s own teach pendant.

The software allows the user to ‘teach’ the robot its sanding pattern. Andrew Pearce’s application engineer readily admits he had no robotics experience before diving into this project. “But any chance I get to learn something is always very exciting. Programming and interfacing with the robot was surprisingly simple and easy to understand,” says Drew.

We grew by over 20%, so we are hoping to continue that growth next year, and having the UR application is going to help us achieve that.

Mike Welch, Production manager at Andrew Pearce Bowls

Setting the way points for the sanding patterns is really simple,” says Alex Drew, application engineer at Andrew Pearce Bowls. “You just set your corners and then decide your speeds and your pattern, hit play and it goes

Andrew Pearce Bowls added a vacuum table controlled by the digital inputs and outputs in the cobot controller. When the boards are brought over to the UR5e cobot, they have been pre-sanded slightly and sprayed with water to raise the grain in order for the cobot to finish sand them. The UR5e picks the board from the infeed, places it on a vacuum table, sands top, sides, and breaks the edges. From there, it brings it to a flip jig, nudges the board a bit, and flips it over 45 degrees so that board can be accessed from the bottom. The cobot then brings the board back to the vacuum table and finishes the other side before stacking it in an outfeed pile. Depending on the size of the board, the cycle varies anywhere from six to seven and a half minutes.

The grooves of the cutting boards are sanded with a spindle that easily replaces the orbital sander on the cobot. “We 3D printed a tool bracket that allowed us to hold a spindle onto the robot, sanding grooves that the regular orbital sander couldn’t fit,” says Mike Welch, production manager at Andrew Pearce Bowls. “We simply pulled the drawings of the UR plate mount off the UR website, placed them into our CAD program to 3D print whatever bracket we needed. Instead of buying a version that was going to cost us upwards of $10,000, we were able to do that in-house for $200.”

“Within the teach pendant itself, it’s very easy to program in the peripherals of the robot,” says, explaining how both the sander and the vacuum gripper have their own URCaps (software handshakes between peripherals and UR cobot arm), which makes it very simple to program, fine-tune and adjust the cobot end-effectors. “If you want to wire in little air components through the digital inputs and outputs, that’s as easy as putting in a node for on and off.”

The UR5e cobot from Universal Robots has a 5kg payload and a reach of 850mm, the team at Andrew Pearce Bowls has outfitted the cobot with the Airpick gripper and Sanding Kit from Robotiq, both UR+ certified to integrate seamlessly with UR cobots.

Using Old World techniques, Andrew Pearce Bows is the nation’s largest producer of hand-turned bowls, processing full truckloads of logs all the way from the raw goods to the finished product.

The company utilizes the entire log to minimize waste, a result of this approach are the cutting boards the company produces in many shapes and sizes.

“Being a small company and a state with a small population pool, we actively look to promote within our ranks,” says Mike Welch, production manager at Andrew Pearce Bowls. “A lot of employees strive to be bowl turners, so when a position opened up, one of our sanders was interested in learning to turn, so we gave him the opportunity. That however left a shortage in the finish sanding; we’ve looked hard and long to fill that position—unsuccessfully—and turned ultimately to adding a Universal Robot instead.”

Quick product change-overs

The team at Andrew Pearce built the fixturing that enables the UR5 to change its own sandpaper in-house. The cell also includes a V-shaped flipping jig that allows the cobot to flip the board over 45 degrees so it can pick it up and sand the bottom side without any manual intervention. “It can literally move through complete cutting boards, 10-15 at a time, depending on how many we can fit on the infeed and outfeed side,” says Andrew Pearce’s application engineer, emphasizing how change-overs are easy to handle as well. “We do anything from cutting boards that are 17x17 inches, all the way down to small ornaments. Changing from one product to the next is super simple. The program stops, you put whatever you need to work on in the infeed table, and then you just open a new program and run it.”

Future applications

Soon, finishing sanding will not be the only task, ‘Sandrew’ – the name the UR5e has been given by the staff - can add to his resume. The team at Alex Pearce Bowls has added another UR+-certified product to the UR5 cobot; the Flexx Reference from Flexxbotics, a software/hardware solution featuring a locking mechanism with a relative offset that eliminates the need to update the UR cobot’s waypoints and moves every time the cobot or the work cell shifts. “With Flexx Reference, we’ll be able to put the robot on a mobile base and move the robot over to load and unload our laser marking machines. Maybe we’ll also add a UR10e to do CNC machine tending at some point,” says Welch. “We see so many new possibilities in the shop and future openings down the road that would allow for more automation now.”

Automation challenges solved:

Sanding application programmed in-house

Ability to sand large variety of short run product batches of cutting boards

Successfully troubleshot robot’s forced stop issues when handling larger pieces

Key value drivers:

Ability to increase production throughput 40% with existing staff

ROI in just two months

Improved work environment boosts employee morale

Tasks solved by collaborative robots

The UR5e cobot handles the entire finish sanding cycle of cutting boards

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