Robot to the rescue: General Industry Coverage

END USERS: RSS Manufacturing, (714) 361-4800, www.rssmfg.com. Phylrich, (714) 361-4830, www.phylrich.com.
CHALLENGE: Produce additional parts without investing in a new machine tool and eliminate manually bending parts.
SOLUTION: A robot that is flexible and easy to program and move.
SOLUTION PROVIDERS: Sparkem Technology, (858) 829-6934, www.sparkem.com; Universal Robots, (631) 610-9664, www.universal-robots.com.

RSS Manufacturing, Costa Mesa, Calif., is in growth mode, according to CEO Geoff Escalette. RSS does OEM work for the plumbing industry and its Phylrich unit, which the company acquired about a year ago, makes luxury faucets and other plumbing fixtures. “Same industry, just a couple different sales channels,” Escalette said. RSS Manufacturing also makes parts for other in-house brands, including its RSS Road Sport Supply performance components for Porsche automobiles.

An order for 700 extra plumbing valves a month caused a dilemma. The 5-axis Hurco machine tool dedicated to those parts produces 500 per month with two shifts working 5 days a week. Machining the extra valves would require buying another $225,000 machine even if the company added a third shift.

Instead, the parts manufacturer began examining automation solutions. Escalette noted a Web forum contributor suggested looking at the robot arms from Universal Robots, a Danish manufacturer of industrial robots with U.S. headquarters in Stony Brook, N.Y. After researching UR’s offerings and seeing a couple of them demonstrated at an automation trade show earlier this year, the faucet maker purchased a UR5 robot arm from distributor Sparkem Technology, San Diego. “We just said, ‘This is worth taking a chance on,’ ” Escalette said. ” ‘Let’s buy one and see what it does.’ “

RSS Manufacturing put the robot to work 24/7 and completed the 1,200-part run in about 10 days, Escalette said. “It even freed up capacity on the machine for the rest of the month.”

Courtesy of Universal Robots

Left: RSS Manufacturing CEO Geoff Escalette programs the UR5 robot arm using the hand-held tablet interface that comes with it.

Courtesy of Universal Robots