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AUTOMATION & ROBOTICS H
ow do businesses solve complex manufacturing problems during a skilled labour shortage crisis? Rapid Robotics, a company that specialises in building easy and affordable
automated processes with robotic arms and customised grippers is providing that solution. “There’s a debilitating labor shortage in the
manufacturing industry right now,” says Jordan Kretchmer, CEO and co-founder of Rapid Robotics. “For every ten people that leave the manufacturing sector as machine operators, only one person comes in and it creates a massive labor gap.” Historically, traditional robotics are generic in design, can be prohibitively expensive, and can be extremely slow to set up for a production line. Rapid Robotics does this all at a fraction of the cost - and incredibly fast. At times, they are able to provide their customers a work cell after only two weeks from the first conversation. The robot is customised to suit the exact need the customer has straight from the start and can work 24/7 with no interruptions. Just like paying an hourly worker - the customer pays Rapid an affordable monthly rate for that work cell (Robot-as-a-service). “End of arm tooling and part manipulation is one of the most complex parts of programming a robot,” Kretchmer says. You can buy grippers off the shelf, but they are extremely expensive and come with a weeks-long lead time. Moreso, they come with inherent issues because they simply are not designed for the specific task needed.
SOLVING COMPLEX MANUFACTURING PROBLEMS DURING A SKILLED LABOUR SHORTAGE CRISIS
Taylor Parker, a mechanical engineer that
works to deploy new work cells admits “In traditional design, through CNCing and other operations where you have to outsource design, outsource parts, it’d take months. It was a task that was impossible with traditional systems integration, which is where Markforged comes in.” Rapid Robotics and Markforged formed a
partnership almost immediately after Rapid’s inception. With Markforged, Rapid has been able to print grippers reliably, affordably, reduce overall weight, and iterate quickly to ensure they get their customers a customised solution that will withstand the stress of heavy- duty manufacturing processes. For Rapid, it is imperative they have a solution
like Markforged for a successful deployment. “No two deployments are the same, every
robot is fully customised. Every part is completely different. We need Markforged in order to get our robots to fit any solution possible.” Parker mentions. With so much success deploying robots to a multitude of different verticals, Rapid still has a long way to go in educating the market that these processes are possible and affordable for manufacturing SMEs.
Markforged
markforged.com 8 JULY/AUGUST 2023 | FACTORY&HANDLINGSOLUTIONS
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