Compact robotic tube bending cell aims at high volume markets

Unison's tube bending cell integrates robot arm, loader, end-former, bender and inspection and can fabricate thousands of parts/day for running cost of around 7 Euros. Based on an articulated robot arm, the Uni-vercell is priced to compete with standalone tube benders. Unison project manager Mike Lawson explains: "We've developed automated cells in the past around our standard tube bending machines. With Uni-vercell, we designed the system from the ground up, replacing the machine's carriage with a standard robot arm. "This allowed us to make the cell much more compact and it achieves perfect accuracy and repeatability because the arm retains the part for the duration of the process and every part is inspected. It eliminates a lot of hardware, and by exploiting the vertical space, we effectively pack three machines into the space of one." Unison's first implementation of Uni-vercell, for fabricating tubular parts with diameters up to 16 mm, has a footprint of just 4.5 m2.