Industrial robots, non-standard automation equipment

In the field of industrial robots, Shenritsui, ABB, Yaskawa and Kuka are often referred to as the "four big families". These "four families" account for more than 70% of the market share of China's robot industry and almost monopolize advanced fields such as robot manufacturing, welding and non-standard automation equipment. As standard components of the Industrial Internet of Things, it is necessary for us to understand their company genes, what are the advantages and disadvantages of their products, and what are their applications in the industrial Internet of Things?

Leader: ABB

ABB Group is a fortune 500 company headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland. ASEA of Sweden and BBC Brown Boveri of Switzerland, founded in 1883 and 1891 respectively, formed in 1988 through the merger of two international companies with more than 100 years of history. In 1974, ABB developed the world's first fully electronically controlled industrial robot, IRB6, which is mainly used for picking and unloading workpiece and material handling. By 2002, ABB had sold more than 100,000 industrial robots, the first manufacturer in the world to do so.

Today, ABB has the largest portfolio of robotics products, technologies and services, and is the world's largest supplier of industrial robots by volume. ABB emphasized the integrity of the robot itself. Its six-axis robot is not the fastest in terms of single-axis speed, but it is highly accurate when all six axes work together.

Features: Best algorithm, but slightly more expensive

ABB, known as "professional and rigorous, practical first", started from frequency converters, inheriting the rigorous enterprise spirit of Switzerland and occupying an important position in the world. In China, MOST power stations and frequency conversion stations are made by ABB. For the robot itself, the biggest challenge is the motion control system, and ABB's core strength is motion control. ABB's robotics algorithms are arguably the best of the four major brands, with not only comprehensive motion control solutions, but also professional and specific product usage technical documentation.

ABB also pays attention to the overall characteristics of the robot. It pays attention to the design of the robot as well as the quality. However, as we all know, THE price of ABB robot equipped with high standard control system is very expensive. In addition, many enterprises responded that ABB has the longest delivery time among the four major brands.

On the practical side, ABB rarely shoots special effects clips, which is difficult to attract attention, but can win the favor of industry insiders. And ABB products, the appearance is not colorful, accessories selection is not new, practical enough to use again. In addition, ABB has complete supporting documentation, relatively mature online community, huge market holding and application cases.

Layout of the Internet of Things

ABB is actively advancing the Industrial Internet of Things with its smart Factory solutions that automate the entire process from order to delivery. Production can be monitored remotely, customer orders and production can be automated, and the entire manufacturing and distribution process of products can be traced. This future vision is already being realized at ABB MCB manufacturing plants.

At ABB Low-voltage Electric Co., LTD in Beijing, 27 robots work with production staff. The plant has been automated in a wide range of areas, such as component manufacturing, production assembly and logistics distribution, from order to delivery.

Car maker: Kuka

Founded in 1898 in Augsburg, Germany, KUKA initially focused on interior and urban lighting, but soon branched out into other areas. The first industrial robot, FAMULUS, was developed in 1973. Kuka's main customers come from the automotive industry, and it also focuses on providing advanced automation solutions for industrial processes, including brain surgery and radiography in hospitals. Its orange robots clearly represent the company's main colors.

We have to mention kuka's customers, including General Motors, Chrysler, Ford, Porsche, BMW, Audi, Mercedes-benz, Foxx, Ferrari, Harley, Boeing, Siemens, IKEA, Swarovski, Wal-mart, Budweiser beer, Coca Cola and other famous big enterprises.

Features: Simple operation, but high failure rate

If ABB is the Mercedes of cars, Kuka is the BMW of cars. Although they are both high-end cars, BMW has a higher repair rate than Mercedes. It is reported that the repair rate of Kuka robot is higher than ABB, Shenri and other robots.

Kuka's advantage in domestic sales lies in its good secondary development, that is, a little white with no technical foundation at all, and even elementary students can use Kuka's software within a day. In terms of man-machine interface, kuka is made very simple to cater to Chinese people's habits, just as easy to use as a game machine. In comparison, the control system of Japanese brand robots has many keyboards, and the operation is slightly complicated.

It is worth mentioning that Kuka is doing well in the field of heavy-duty robots. Among the robots over 120 KG, Kuka and ABB have the most market share, while in the heavy-duty 400 KG and 600 KG robots, Kuka has the most sales volume. Kuka has been in the industrial robot industry for more than 40 years, and the process package still provides a lot of common applications.

Just looking at the product appearance, it is much more fashionable than ABB. Pursuing the new and fashion is kuka's label. Kuka is also the best at special effects among robot manufacturers. This guy has released several unreliable promotional videos in recent years, which have become popular outside the circle and ridiculed by many people inside the circle. In a word, Kuka is an "unconventional" manufacturer. Although its technical level is relatively weak compared with ABB, it still represents the first-class level in the industry.

Internet of Things movement

Kuka became popular last year with the news that it would be acquired by Midea, a German robotics company. At the annual meeting of Midea Group in January this year, Chairman Fang Hongbo stressed the industrial significance of Midea's acquisition of Kuka: The most direct impact of Kuka's entry on Midea is that Midea will use Kuka as a platform to build a new industry in the future. In the future, Midea will build a second industry segment besides the home appliance industry, namely the robot and industrial automation industry segment, which is a new growth point of Midea.

Giant Yellow: Deepid

FANUC was founded in 1956. Three years later, it launched the electro-hydraulic stepper motor for the first time. In the 1970s, thanks to the rapid development of microelectronics technology, power electronics technology, especially computing technology, FANUC decided to abandon the electro-hydraulic stepper motor NC products that made it rich and began to transform. In 1976, Shenlide successfully developed numerical control system, and then with SIEMENS jointly developed a high level of numerical control system, since then, Shenlide products with each passing day, annual renovation, become the world today's numerical control system, design, manufacturing, sales strength of one of the strongest enterprises.

Shenrite, headquartered under Mount Fuji, is known as the "Yellow Giant under Mount Fuji" for its great achievements in industrial automation. It is also known as the first company that actually uses robots to make robots.

Features: very high accuracy, but not overload

Known as the world numerical control system scientific research, design, manufacturing, sales strength of the most powerful enterprise, shenlide about numerical control system research can be traced back to 1956, have forward-looking Japanese technical experts foresee the arrival of the 3C era, and set up a scientific research team.

The precipitation of history has created the advantage of Shenritude in precision, because in the process of CNC machine tool processing, the precision of the parts it processes directly affects the quality of the product, part of the mechanical parts and precision equipment parts of the processing precision requirements are very high. And the advantages of numerical control system in the robot body, The precision of The industrial robot is also very high. In addition, compared with other enterprises, Shenri industrial robots are unique in that the process control is more convenient, the base size of the same type of robot is smaller, and it has a unique arm design.

However, The stability of the robot is not the best. It is reported that in the process of full load operation, when the speed reaches 80%, the robot will alarm, which also shows that the overload capacity of the robot is not very good. Therefore, The advantage of Shenri lies in the application of light load and high precision, which is also the reason why shenri's miniaturized robot (less than 24 KG) sells well.

In terms of integrated packages, Synapse provides users with about 70 options that can meet most application requirements. At the same time, Shenri is the only manufacturer in the industry that integrates vision into the robot controller. All you need to do is buy ordinary industrial cameras to complete a variety of complex vision applications.