WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT

“It is hard to find employees here in the Pacific Northwest, because aerospace is such a large volume,” says CEO of Tool Gauge, Debbie Lee. “We have a great opportunity here with bringing in the cobots, because we’re now looking for a different type of employee than in the past. Before, we were hiring for machine operators, people that would just stand, swing a gate and pull parts off the press. Now, with the robots coming in, we’re looking for that type of employee that is going to be able to do the programming and set the robots up and work alongside the robots.”

Cobots Automate and Lower Labor Costs

Universal Robots Helps Tool Gauge Double Production of Plastic and Metal Aerospace Components Despite Labor Shortage

Tacoma, Washington-based Tool Gauge manufactures precision metal and plastic components and assemblies for the aerospace industry, but producing these labor-intensive products in a tight hiring market presents significant challenges. With long-term customer contracts that can’t be renegotiated, Tool Gauge turned to automation to help mitigate and contain labor costs. Two collaborative robots from Universal Robots accomplished that goal, while also decreasing scrap and improving product quality. And while reducing the need for additional workers for repetitive, undesirable jobs, Tool Gauge also found new opportunities for employees to add value, improve safety, and gain job satisfaction.

Jim Lee, Tool Gauge general manager, faces the stark realities of doing business in a global market. Even though the company is close to many of its customers in the Pacific Northwest, those customers can do business anywhere in the world, including in much lower-cost labor markets. “It became clear to us that the way that we can compete is not by adding more bodies but by adding more technology, and then adding more value using that technology,” Lee explains. The company’s fixed-price contracts can extend for five to seven years, without the ability to renegotiate even if labor costs increase. Tool Gauge needed to build in efficiencies—and found that cobots from Universal Robots (UR) were the perfect solution.

Lee describes the three key advantages of UR’s collaborative robots. “We chose Universal Robots because number one, they are cobots: We were always kind of afraid of using automation because there’s a huge capital investment, but that isn’t the case

with the Universal Robots. Two, we were concerned about walling off portions of our manufacturing to put in automation cells, which we don’t have to do with UR. And three, we can configure the UR cobots to do hundreds of different things; they’re highly configurable and they’re easy to move around. So for us, it was really the only solution.”

UR Cobot Implemented in Metal Machining Application Drives Immediate Return Tool Gauge installed two UR cobots to address repetitive, high-labor applications in both its metal and plastic parts departments. On the metal side, an easily damaged copper machined part was being produced by a fully-attended journeyman CNC machinist simply to pull parts off the The UR cobots can be taught in “free drive mode” enabling the user to simply teach the cobot the desired trajectory by CNC chute, clean, rinse, dry, and box them. moving it through waypoints. “We believe the teach method for the Universal Robots is one of the biggest benefits by far,” says Now, the parts pass a proximity sensor that manufacturing engineer at Tool Gauge, Steve Ouzts. sends a signal to a UR3 cobot to pick them up. The cobot places Cobot Doubles Production While Reducing Labor parts in a rinse bath, then holds them up in front of a dryer where by 75 Percent after they are dropped into individual cardboard cells. In the injection molding department, a UR5 robot is used for an

Tool Gauge was able to use the palletizing wizard that is built intricate plastic extrusion assembly, picking up end caps for a into the UR cobot to easily program the robot to drop each part plastic panel, moving them through a glue dispenser. After correct into an open cell in the box in a grid pattern. “When we put the dispensing of the glue in the end cap, the UR5 places the part in Universal Robot in place, that was a $9,000 savings of the reduced an actuator on a table where the part is clamped. An operator then labor involvement on the very first order, and we expect to run that takes over, inspects the gluing, and removes the part. This task used multiple times in the future,” says Lee, who is no longer wasting his to require four operators to produce about two hundred units per machinist’s talents but can have him focus on higher-value projects day. Now, the automated application requires one operator working such as setting up and programming the CNC machines. with the UR5 cobot to produce four hundred units per day. The

Once the UR3 has dropped parts into all cells in the box, the cobot alerts the operator to insert a new grid pattern so a new layer of parts can be added.

bonding operation also had a fairly high rejection rate. Tool Gauge manufacturing engineer Steven Ouzts explains, “Any time you work with glue, there are so many variables that can negatively impact the results of your product, so we wanted to switch away from humanapplied gluing to robot-applied gluing to take advantage of the repeatability that a robot gives. Our scrap rates are reduced from 15 percent to just three percent.”

General manager Lee adds, “What I thought would be one of the most difficult assembly operations—using a robot to apply glue on a very complex surface—works very, very well.” Beyond the labor savings, Lee also emphasizes the quality and consistency of the robotic bond, and the fact that it gives operators time to inspect the bond rather than just producing the part as quickly as possible.

Not only was it difficult for a human operator to dispense glue exactly the same way every time, potential injury was also a concern. Ouzts explains, “The area the glue needs to be applied is incredibly narrow, so over time, operators were seeing fatigue in their hands.” This fatigue is now a thing of the past. “It’s very nice having the Universal Robot in that cell because of how safe it is. You don’t have to worry about injuries resulting from this cobot,” says Ouzts. According to CEO of Tool Gauge, Debbie Lee, the company has experienced additional savings through a decrease in repetitive motion injuries. “We have seen a reduction in the Labor and Industry claims on our production floor, as robotics take over these monotonous tasks,” she says, adding that the robots have enabled Tool Gauge to appeal to younger workers, providing a hiring advantage for recent grads who want to work with exciting, interesting technologies. “Working with the cobots is something that they enjoy, it’s more of a skilled hobby, rather than just coming in and running a machine.”

Easy Programming Key for Workers Without Robot Experience Before the Universal Robots, manufacturing engineer Ouzts had minimal robotic experience—just some time in college using a traditional, non-intuitive SCARA robot. The easy UR programming experience was a huge benefit. “When switching to Universal Robots, the intuitive nature of the graphic user interface is what really drew me in,” he says. “I really appreciate how all the terms in the software are in layman’s terms. I can understand them a lot easier and know exactly how the code runs from start to finish, and I get very good positive feedback graphically of what my actions will cause the robot to do.”

To help deal with glue inconsistencies, Tool Gauge paired the UR5 robot to a Nordson two-part adhesive dispenser, which dispenses at the same pressure every time. This, combined with the robot’s repeatable tool path to apply glue to the work piece, provides consistent results every time.

Another benefit of the Universal Robots is how easy it is to connect digital and analog input signals to a control box. Ouzts found that using the proximity sensor was as easy as plugging the wires into one of the 12-volt digital inputs, selecting it from the I/O screen on the UR3’s teach pendant, and waiting for a signal from the sensor to tell the cobot when it’s time to pick up a part.

Employees Welcome Cobot Colleagues One of the first reasons Tool Gauge looked at automation was to address serious labor shortages. The company was looking at the need to hire as many as a hundred new employees who simply weren’t available in the tight Pacific Northwest labor market. With the UR cobots, the company is able to cut that number in half, while being able to hire workers for jobs they want. Lee says, “We found out that the people that were doing the jobs that the robot would do were really happy not to have to do those jobs any more. I think that we’ll be ordering a lot more because people enjoy working next to the robots. They’re just fantastic, and they’re quiet, and they’re very predictable in terms of what they produce and the number of things that they can do. If you ask all of our employees if they would have any concerns about working next to a Universal Robot it would be emphatically, “Absolutely none.” ROI Much Faster Than Anticipated With Future is Ripe for More Cobots In the aerospace industry, where product designs can remain unchanged for twenty or thirty years, expectations for return on capital investment is longer than many other industries. Lee initially thought that a three- or a four-year return on the robot investment would be good. He was pleasantly surprised by the Universal Robots, seeing 50 percent ROI on the UR5 within the first quarter of production, and similar for the UR3, and with expected payback for both robots under a year. “We’re very thrilled with that,” he states.

The cobots’ ability to be easily moved and reprogrammed for additional processes, with easy changes of end-of-arm tooling, lets Tool Gauge look at a wide range of tasks where cobot advantages can improve processes and output. For instance, traditional robots on injection molding machines could be replaced with cobots, and cobots could tend presses and other machining tasks, as well as final assembly.

As easy as it is to move the cobots to new applications, engineer Ouzts is looking forward to bringing in more Universal Robots to take on additional high-volume jobs, including one for riveting and assembly. “One particular part requires twenty rivets to be installed, and since it’s so high-volume, we immediately saw an application for a robot right there,” he says. “We can have a semi-automatic rivet

gun attached to the end of the arm that can do all the riveting for us. We plan on doing this at the injection mold press, so this part never has to leave that area for secondary operations.”

Ouzts sounds somewhat surprised as he explains how much he enjoys working with the robots. “It’s nice being a part of the future,” he says. “It’s certainly the direction most manufacturing is heading, and I just like seeing everybody else’s faces light up when they see it in operation.”

ABOUT UNIVERSAL ROBOTS

Universal Robots was founded in 2005 to make robot technology accessible to all by developing small, user-friendly, reasonably priced, flexible industrial robots that are safe to work with. Since the first collaborative robot (cobot) was launched in 2008, the company has experienced considerable growth with the user-friendly cobot now sold worldwide. The company, which is a part of Teradyne Inc., is headquartered in Odense, Denmark, and has subsidiaries and regional offices in the United States, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Russia, Turkey, China, India, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Mexico. In 2018, Universal Robots had a revenue of USD 234 million.

For more information, please visit www.universal-robots.com or read our blog at blog.universal-robots.com

ABOUT TOOL GAUGE

Founded in 1966 and headquartered in Tacoma, Wash., Tool Gauge manufactures complex, high-value plastic and metal parts and assemblies. Global aerospace OEMs and tier-one aircraft interior integrators trust Tool Gauge for its high product quality, on-time delivery, and relentless pursuit of technology. The company has been the proud recipient of Boeing’s Silver / Silver Performance Award for manufacturing excellence for the past nine consecutive years (20102018) as well as the PNAA’s 2017 Aerospace Company of the Year award.

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