Speaker 0 00:00:00.5100000 <inaudible>
Speaker 1 00:00:09.0399999 Hello everyone. And welcome to the robot nation podcast. This is the podcast dedicated to advanced manufacturing capital equipment and the robotics and automation industry. We'll be covering trends and topics important to factory automation and robotics. And we'll interview guests in our series of podcasts. We know that manufacturing is great. It brings all kinds of jobs into your community. And if you're good at it, you'll have a job for life. My name is Jim Beretta, and I'm your host. I'm also president of customer attraction and industrial marketing based out of Cambridge, Ontario. If you liked this podcast, please rate us wherever you find your podcasts, but more importantly, tell your friends about it, send them an email, tweet us or hashtag robot nation podcast. And if you'd like to get in touch with us, our email address is robot nation
[email protected]. If you have an idea, maybe an interesting company or technology, or if you'd like to be a guest or nominate someone to be a guest, please send me an email at that address as well.
Speaker 1 00:01:05.8900000 And I'd like to thank and acknowledge our sponsor today. And that's the, <inaudible> the association for advancing automation. It's the umbrella association for the robot industry association, automated imaging association, motion control manufacturers association, and a three Mexico. These four associations combined represent almost 1300 automation manufacturers, component suppliers, systems integrators, end users, research groups, and consulting firms from throughout the world that are driving automation forward. And I'd like to welcome today, our guests and that is Dave Henderson. And David is the founder and CEO of new scale robotics and new scale technologies. New scale was founded in 2002 to create unique motion solutions that deliver the smallest size, highest precision plug and play integration and save time. New scale robotics, smart grippers, our agile automation solutions for small part gauging data logging and sorting for high mix, small batch manufacturing. These grippers are you are plus certified and install in minutes. New scale technologies, micro motion innovations include two electric motors that move optics in mobile phone cameras and mechatronic motion solutions for medical, industrial, and aerospace applications. All the products are embedded solutions. No
Speaker 2 00:02:33.9100000 Separate electronics are required. So Dave, welcome to the podcast. Thank you Jim. Glad to be here on our podcast today, we're going to talk about a new, exciting robotic end of arm tool that your company has built for small part manufacturers called Q span. But before we get to that, I wanted to get a little bit of background from you. You first got interested in automation and robotics creating these ultra miniature motors. Can you tell the audience a little about your wife and that part of your business?
Speaker 3 00:03:02.6100000 Sure. My whole career has really been around precision motion and in 2002, we at our start, we, we invented and manufactured some tiny PA's electric motors that were small enough to move the lens in your smartphone camera. And that was really our start with this, uh, this, this journey into embedded motion. We created solutions that could, uh, focus your camera in the smallest smartphones. Uh, in 2012, that industry went a different direction, frankly. So we took this technology into medical, industrial aerospace, and defense applications, and really emphasize the even embedded motion as you described, it's all the electronics from inside. There is no separate drive. All of our devices, these smart micro mechatronic modules, they fit on your fingertip and we have to size this three words, small, precise, and smart for this core background. In 2017, it was really a logical transition to start thinking about how to create plug and play gripper calipers for the newest and smallest collaborative robots and in particular, the newest robots from universal robots.
Speaker 3 00:04:16.1700000 So in 2018, in September, we launched our new new scale robotics division, which is part of new scale technologies. And we introduced the new gripper caliber for the universal robots line, you know, and it's most important, um, attribute that came out in 2018 was how precise it was, how we were able not only to pick up parts, but also to measure parts in 2019 last year, we introduced about a year ago, introduced the new multi-tool Mount that really leveraged this idea of plug and play and embedded motion into a three grippers on one robot solution where you can, you can basically increase your throughput, reduce your cycle time, getting the most out of a single robot. And then the next evolution of this product wasn't in last December, when we introduced the Q span workstation that takes this three, represent one robot and merges it into a complete workstation solution that automates small part measurement and specifically automates the manual measurements currently being made using digital calipers.
Speaker 2 00:05:22.7700000 Thanks for that, Dave, your new product is meant to help small part manufacturers be more profitable and solve what kinds of problem.
Speaker 3 00:05:30.0200000 So our, our mission industrial robotics is to really provide the smart automation tools for flexible manufacturing. And this really is, is mostly emphasizing small and medium sized enterprises that have, but not always, but, but any enterprise where there's a high mix, small batch manufacturing, where you simply can't use hard to ultimation that does one thing. And one thing only. And so we created a full solution, the Cuban workstation, and we chose work with universal robots as the industry meeting cobalt supplier and our, our emphasis today is on automating that digital caliper measurements where you can in a, in a small company where you might be paying a person full time to measure parts with digital calipers, where we can automate that to increase the productivity of your staff and improve your overall process quality. What are some of the challenges to manually measuring with a digital caliper?
Speaker 3 00:06:27.2000000 Sure. First of all, uh, you know, the, the measurements themselves take a fairly skilled technician that understands how to minimize variations. If anyone is many of our listeners, I'm sure have used the digital caliper to measure apart and those that how you hold it, how much pressure you use, the location you measure and, and the type of measurement tips you have really determined, uh, the repeatability of the measure in our, in our process, in our process development, we emphasize it, you know, every part has to be measured in the same orientation, measured at the same location or the same force. This is something that's very challenging when you're having people do the measurements because of the changing dexterity, the fatigue and their distraction. And who are your customers? Like, what sectors are they in? You know, we're targeting quality professionals and engineers that need to increase their capacity of their other operations.
Speaker 3 00:07:23.1200000 They need better staff engagement and they want to reduce measurement errors. You know, this means that it's an interesting shift because it means the people we're targeting care more about the whole solution and what we achieve as a system. And they really care less about the underlying technologies and software. They really value integration, particularly the integration of part movement and part measurement and data logging. And this is a, a, a big advantage we have with the, by integrating a collaborative robot is that they're very easy to program. You can, you can quickly deploy them. And just as important, you can redeploy them with your in house team to different parts. So what, what is a smart end effector? Like what are some of the characteristics about? We talk about mechatronics a lot and that's, that's really a big word. That's becoming more popular. This idea that your system integrates motor mechanisms, bearings, sensors, drive electronics, microprocessors, and embedded for war all inside in this case, a gripper.
Speaker 3 00:08:28.7300000 So when you think about the gripper, all that it needs is 24 volts, which is the common industry, voltage supply available and digital commands. In our case, we use <inaudible> as a parallel bus, but there's, if you use ethernet or can, or a lot of other potential interfaces, but you're sending commands to the gripper to make it do what you want. And the report takes care of the movement and the measurement and the closed loop control. In our case, you know, our, our, our gripper is that has a 20 millimeter stroke. It's programmable of the 10 Newtons. It can measure parts of a hundred millimeters and a hundred grams, and it only weighs 175 grams itself. So it's, it's very compatible with the idea of using it on small robots, especially if you want to put three grippers on one small robot.
Speaker 1 00:09:16.1200000 And you mentioned about plug and play. So how does the plug and play aspect work?
Speaker 3 00:09:20.0300000 So plug and play is a natural extension of this idea of a smart gripper. And in the case of universal robots, it's a, it's a simple mechanical installation for bolts. It's a, it's a single connector that you plug into the tomb port for RS 45, and then you load software inside the URL teach pendant, and our application runs inside of the universal robots operating system. So when you're, when you bring up the operating system for the robot, we're just another axes or multiple axes on the robot, it's all seamlessly integrated in a single operating application. And then we also provide that I'll put through the robots, it either in a cable to an external computers, when you want to log data.
Speaker 1 00:10:03.6000000 So you designed cue span to work on a collaborative robot. And why is that? And we should probably talk a little bit about what a collaborative robot is as opposed to industrial robot.
Speaker 3 00:10:11.7500000 Yeah, so universal the robots is the industry leader in collaborative robots, and they've really, really defined this new market niche. And a lot of ways they're more intuitive and easier to use. I think a key idea is you don't program the robot, you teach it. And that literally means you, you move the robot arm to a position and say, remember this position. And then you move to another position I've heard testimonials or where people on the shop floor say, if you can operate your smartphone, you can operate this robot. So this is some of the difference that isn't, isn't typically historically been true of some of the more classic industrial robots that require a much higher level of embedded knowledge, um, inners or robots has exactly the same objectives that we have in this space. They provide the robot, we provide the, the solution, you know, they, they talk about the ability to automate anything in there.
Speaker 3 00:11:06.4100000 And they're in some of their descriptions of their products, a big differentiator between collaborative industrial robots is the open architecture. The idea that we can actually write programs and load them into the robot controller is something that's really new to the industry and some circles. And in some groups, the idea that you would do that to a robot that you could load third party software, just as an incredible stressful idea, because it means you're creating uncertainties and dangerous. And, and the fact that universal robots supports this and certifies what we do as part of their URL caps program is very powerful. So we're actually certified by universal robots, our product, and they promoted on their new application webpages. So
Speaker 2 00:11:54.0800000 Yes, I, so that's a good segue. I understand that the product, the KeySpan is now part of URS application kit. So what does that mean to a quality control manager or a plant owner?
Speaker 3 00:12:04.5300000 So it means you really have a couple options for proceeding to, to bring automated part measurement into your facility. You can buy a kit, uh, do it yourself kit, uh, that really is enables your in house automation team to independently purchase our product ACU span and purchase a robot from, you know, the robots merge them together. And in just a few hours, you'll have a functioning system. And this system, with an example, part will demonstrate pick, measure, record in place. It will show how you can present parts and remove parts using modular trays. Uh, we'll provide metrology tooling that is designed specifically for this example part and we'll provide, um, they add includes by the way, um, zero reference artifacts. So you can always prove that you're measuring the right dimensions and at any point in your process, and we'll provide the software that ties it all together into a, into a complete process from that, uh, the year in house automation team can make the adjustments and changes needed to measure your specific parts.
Speaker 3 00:13:11.6700000 So if you have an in house automation team, the kit get you started and your in house team takes it from there. If you don't have any in house automation, team, many small companies, don't, uh, we're also providing a workstation solution where we will take your parts and create the tooling and process for lost parts and deliver it to you as a complete solution with the hope and expectation that after we deliver that your staff can pick up the responsibility for future additions and a new parts that you might want to measure. But we're also available to continuously support that if you use,
Speaker 2 00:13:48.5300000 And they would just need new trays or whatever for new parts,
Speaker 3 00:13:52.3500000 New trays, fingertips, uh, new, new, uh, dead nest, all, all the things that are specific to the particular feature that you're being met, that's being measured.
Speaker 2 00:14:01.9800000 And what kind of parts does KeySpan work on? What size
Speaker 3 00:14:05.5100000 We like to bound the current product at dimensions, less than four inches, the mass less than, um, three or four ounces, a dimensional tolerances greater than one thousands of an inch. And in general, a good rule of thumb is if, if the part can be measured effectively using a manual digital caliper, we can do that. We can measure that part with Q span. We're actually probably about two times more precise, but it's a good rule of thumb to start. And we can always have a conversation about that. And we're happy to provide a free assessment of your part to help you determine whether what the parts you're making is compatible with QSP and measurements.
Speaker 2 00:14:49.7400000 Very nice. What happens on a part changeover.
Speaker 3 00:14:53 So after you've created a process and you validated it, and you're satisfied, you're getting the proper measurements from your part. If you want to switch over to another validated part, it's really a question of, of changing the tooling, installing new tooling, fingertips, tres deadness, your reference, installing the robot program that's been saved for that particular part, establishing new zero references for your gripper calipers, and then running your process, pick measure, record in place. Usually it takes just minutes. It takes certainly less than an hour.
Speaker 2 00:15:27.5200000 That's very, very good, very, very fast. What let's talk about the economics of the system, how much does it cost and what are the expected paybacks in terms of time?
Speaker 3 00:15:36.1500000 So for the cue span kit, the do it yourself kit, the retail price is $35,000, and you'll need to buy in parallel with that for universal robot, which is a similar, similar price. So it's about a $70,000 investment. Approximately if you want the workstation solution, they typically started about $40,000. Plus you also have to buy the robot. So it starts at 70, and then you have to add in additional time and expense. If you, if you want custom parts, you know, a good rule of thumb when you add in your in house time is you might have a hundred thousand dollars investment in the total, once you're deployed and everyone's trained and up and running. So in that scenario, a return on investment will vary, but in, in many scenarios, particularly for your work in a couple of two shifts, the payback will be less than 10 months, and our team is happy to assist you with that return on investment assessment.
Speaker 3 00:16:36.3900000 Excellent. How do you get this? Like, what is the process to buying, installing and commissioning our Q span system? So, first of all, a contact us, and we're happy to get you started on that process. Um, you can buy the QC span directly from new sterile robotics or from our distributors, and we'll, we'll coordinate and we'll help you with that. Uh, the universal robot is needed as the <inaudible> cobalt, and then we'll need to be purchased from a distributor. And if you buy the kit and of course, then you're at your purchase, you're installing that system at your facility with your in house automation team. If you're buying the solution, then we would ask you to drop ship the robot to us, we'll do the installation and the verification and deliver the complete solution to you.
Speaker 2 00:17:28.3600000 That's great. Um, Dave, is there anything that I've missed kind of in our conversation today about Q span and about, uh, small parts measurement. We did make the assumption that these will live usually in the QA lab or the, or the quality control area.
Speaker 3 00:17:41.6399999 So w the, the initial thinking was the, an expectation is this product would be used in a QC lab where, you know, essentially a person would stand up, move their chair out of the way and move ACU span in, in the same space. So you can, you can Islam huge span in a QC lab with very little change in your facilities or your workflow. We were also getting some market feedback that says it's very important to think about having huge spans on the factory floor next to the machine. And that's an area that we can also support, and we're happy to have those discussions. They tend to be very specific to the process and environment that it's in, but, but we certainly can work also on that, on the factory floor.
Speaker 1 00:18:26.8900000 Thank you for that. Uh, David,
Speaker 3 00:18:28.8900000 And how do people get ahold of you? Right.
Speaker 1 00:18:30.4799999 They're interested in finding out about new scale technologies about I'm sorry, a new scale robotics and, um, span,
Speaker 3 00:18:37.3800000 Please go to a new scale, robotics.com or is it a website? And it's that, that's a, that's the best way to connect to information about our products. You can reach me directly. And the office number is (585) 924-4450. And, uh, we have, we have salespeople ready or myself ready to talk to you about this product. We're happy to, to hear what your requirements are and help you take the next steps into automation. We're targeting people that we appreciate the fact that we're, we're taught, we're targeting people that perhaps this is their first automation project. And so we wanna, we want to make that, uh, that discovery process is as painless and as clear as possible would help you think through how you can, how you can bring automation to your two year high mix, small batch manufacturing process.
Speaker 1 00:19:29.0200000 Well, thank you, Dave. I appreciate your time today. And thanks for joining us on the robot nation podcast. If you have a idea or interesting company or technology that, or you'd like to be a guest on our podcast, please send me an
[email protected]. Again, I'd like to thank me 83, the association for advancing automation or their sponsorship, and we will see you next time. Thanks Dave. Thank you, Jim.
Speaker 4 00:19:54.3800000 <inaudible>.
