Automate to innovate: Automation & Robotics

An entrepreneur and avid off-road outdoorsman, Wiley Davis came up with his successful manufacturing business concept while driving home from a surfing and camping trip to Baja, Mexico. After struggling once more to fit his 1.92 m (6′ 4″) frame into his 1.83 m (6′) truck bed to sleep, he envisioned what became Go Fast Campers, a manufacturer of customized, lightweight pop-up truck campers.

Less than five years later, the CEO and co-founder has grown a vertically integrated manufacturing operation headquartered in Belgrade, Montana, with four other locations and 65 employees. He said a line of UR5 collaborative robots from Universal Robots USA Inc. in Ann Arbor, Michigan, enabled the manufacturer to achieve that growth.

“Had we not built the entire company around the concept of automation, our 65 employees wouldn’t have those jobs at all,” Davis said. “And the products we make — if we were able to form a company around it — would only be affordable to a very tiny portion of people.”

He previously owned a much smaller company that manufactured off-road motorcycle parts. Through it, he discovered the challenges of manual machine tending.

“In the beginning, I designed all the parts, I made all the parts, I shipped all the parts — basically, everything having to do with the business, I had to do,” Davis said. “When you have to stand in front of a machine, pushing a button, if you step away for anything, those parts don’t get made. I knew you could tend machines with robots, so there was a ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if?’ scenario running around in my head.”Because the business required fast design changes, he needed flexible automation. And with no background in robotics, he said he also needed a solution he could learn swiftly.”I didn’t want to spend six months trying to figure out how to use the robot or solve the robot’s problems,” Davis said. “I wanted to be solving my problems quickly.”Once he discovered Universal Robots, he said he decided to purchase a cobot and figure it out once it arrived. He ordered a UR5 cobot and downloaded the manual to read before the robot arrived.Davis’ first self-taught integration started simply. The cobot loaded and unloaded parts from a Haas CNC machine using an M code relay and a wire to one of the inputs on the cobot so it could push a button to open the machine door. Over time, the program evolved and became more efficient with the addition of an inexpensive air cylinder for the door and a relay on the cycle start switch connected to one of the cobot’s outputs. That allowed the cobot’s own controller to manage the full process while saving wear on the cobot’s joints.This early success reinforced his enthusiasm for automation.With Go Fast Campers’ experience in replicating successful, reliable and fully integrated cobot-tended machining cells, the manufacturer is developing a new business to help other entrepreneurial companies with automation. Pictured is Ian Sparkman, special projects team engineer. Image courtesy Universal Robots USA

“The dream scenario that had played in my head standing at the machine turned out to be true because once that got running, even in a very limited capacity, it basically cut the time I had to stand at the machine in half,” Davis said. “That allowed me to start focusing on other things like making better designs, hiring and getting new people trained, and I started thinking about new ideas. The fact that Go Fast Campers exists is to a large degree due to that because otherwise I’d still be there, overwhelmed with all of the parts that I had to make.”

His original UR5 cell has expanded to four cobot machine tending cells using UR5e cobots, and that first simple program continues to evolve.

“What we’re attempting to do is to run any part that we throw at it without having to make a new program,” Davis said.

That gives the company flexibility and improves reliability because the team doesn’t need to test and monitor new programs before moving them into
production.

Go Fast Campers’ products fit a range of vehicle brands and models. The company manufactures 174 unique parts, such as bolts, connectors and hinges, which fit into different products and at different quantities. All the parts start as raw pieces of aerospace-grade aluminum billet material that are cut into seven different standard stock sizes and loaded on trays at the four cobot-managed machining cells. Each robot uses the same program, with minimal input from an operator to define which part is being manufactured.