Flexxbotics, delivering workcell digitalization for robot-driven manufacturing, announced that SpiTrex Orthopedics, a medical device contract manufacturer, has selected the Flexxbotics solution for robot-driven manufacturing with autonomous process control in its FOBA laser marking machine work cells.
The Flexxbotics solution enables robots to communicate directly with the FOBA laser marking system and change jobs in real time and within sequence, reducing changeover time to 10 minutes, twice a week. The robots also connect with the vision system, verifying the laser marking on each part to autonomously sort based on the results, providing closed-loop quality for higher yields.
"Flexxbotics is the only robot machine tending software solution we found capable of delivering the precision, cycle-time and closed-loop compliance required," said Brett Gopal, SpiTrex Orthopedics Senior Vice President of Operations. "We are impressed with Flexxbotics' autonomous process control using robots, and the ability to close-the-loop by alerting upstream and downstream work cells of quality problems based on automated inspection results, which is quite unique."
Flexxbotics directs the robots to use the COGNEX camera images to determine the pass/fail status of each part, and then sends alerts with the images to pre- and post-process work cells when nonconformance issues are detected that need correcting.
Flexxbotics changes jobs in real time and within sequence, enabling job changeover at SpiTrex in less than 10 minutes, as opposed to requiring an hour or more of an engineer's time to set up the workcell when a new job is run.
Gopal explained, "The autonomous changeover process coupled with the closed feedback loop functionality enables us to produce extremely high tolerance parts through continuous flow, which reduces the overall lead time by 20+%. Flexxbotics directly improves our throughput and ROC, which in turn increases profitability."
SpiTrex selected Flexxbotics based on the following criteria:
- Ability to autonomously configure the robot and the FOBA laser marker for each job that will run
- Closed-loop in-line inspection with COGNEX vision system, which directs the robot to sort parts based on the FOBA marking results and conformance to critical characteristics
- Open connectivity and interoperability between robots, FOBA laser marking system and COGNEX vision systems, along with existing IT business systems
- Interchangeable carousels with universal switching process to enable quick changeover for faster set-up times
- Direct feed of workcell operations and inspection data into quality repository
- Solution flexibility to start with initial work cells, get success quickly and scale to additional FOBA laser marking work cells factory-wide.
Gopal said: "Rolling out Flexxbotics across all FOBA laser marking work cells results in a 10:1 machine-to-man ratio, which enables continuous operation, allowing us to ship more high quality parts even with labor shortage challenges, making it a game-changer for our business. It was clear the benefit of Flexxbotics' solution horizontally integrating from one FOBA machine to another. What made their solution extremely unique was their ability to vertically integrate to our pre-machining process, post process and IT systems."
SpiTrex is an international contract manufacturer with specific focus on complex orthopedic implants for the Spine, Trauma and Extremity markets (Spi.Tr.Ex). The company has a multisite manufacturing footprint across North America and Europe.
For more information contact:
Flexxbotics
12 Channel St.
Boston, MA 02110
877-456-1576
www.flexxbotics.com
SpiTrex Orthopedics
info@spitrexorthopedics.com
www.spitrexorthopedics.com