CNC Robot Machine Tending vs Advanced Robotic Machine Tending; What’s the Difference?

Today, I want to take look at the difference between basic CNC robot machine tending and Advanced Robotic Machine Tending.

While there are a number of differences, the key distinction is that basic machine tending involves a single robot with one machine whereas advanced machine tending involves one or more robots with multiple machines. It could be two, three, five, or more machines being tended at the same time in advanced robotic machine tending setups.

Here are some basic definitions:

What Is CNC Robot Machine Tending?

Basic robotic machine tending automates simple steps such as loading raw materials into CNCs and unloading finished parts. Production robotic automation can be applied to CNCs and other factory machines using different types of robots – typically either industrial robots or power & force-limiting robots known as collaborative robots – which improve machine uptime operation, productivity, and output.

What Is Advanced Robotic Machine Tending?

Advanced robotic machine tending expands the capabilities of basic robot machine tending to enable the robot to operate multiple machines for a wider range of parts with multiple work orders in multi-step operations such as different machining ops, deburring, inspection, sorting, serialization, and/or assembly, all within a single workflow. For example, a robot can load workpieces into several CNC machines, perform wash down and blow-off cleaning, move the finished parts to an automated inspection machine, and then sort the parts based on inspection results. Sophisticated set-ups will include the ability to update and correct the machine programs’ processing instructions (offset parameters) based on inspection results to avoid nonconformances, which is called autonomous process control.

So, in addition to multiple machines being tended by the robots, advanced robotic machine tending often involves multiple parts or SKUs with multiple operations and also involves multiple process steps all orchestrated for continuous unattended operation.

These advanced machine tending deployments are what we do at Flexxbotics, and what we believe is the key to autonomous manufacturing.

If you’re interested in more, check out our Complete Guide to Robotic Machine Tending Projects