Five-axis flexibility paying off for Sepro and its customers

FRIEDRICHSHAFEN, GERMANY — French robot maker Sepro Robotique expects to generate 78 million euros ($99 million) in 2014 sales — 17 percent more than 2013 — as Sepro's five-axis robots win new customers, executives said at Fakuma.

Sepro showed off nine robots on its stand, and another five at machinery partner companies, the brands Sumitomo Demag, Haitian, Billion, JSW and another private label arrangement Sepro did not identify.

Sepro's five-axis robot, called the 5X, is a Sepro three-axis beam robot with a rotating, two-axis wrist from Stäubli Robotics. Sepro introduced the 5X line at the last Fakuma, in 2012, and it has become the company's fastest-growing new product over the past few years, according to Marcus Klaputek, international sales manager.

The 5X can be easily adapted to different molds and machines by changing the movement path using the controller, instead of the traditional way of making lots of mechanical adjustments. The wrist moves to position the part for post-molding work such as flaming or vision inspection.

“Even if customers don't have an immediate need for this type of robot, they are buying a five-axis robot to give them this flexibility,” Klaputek said in Sepro's Fakuma news conference.

Jean-Michel Renaudeau echoed those remarks.

“To be a successful molder today, you need to produce complex parts, on short cycles and with exceptional quality. You need to make frequent mold changes with as little downtime as possible. And you need to do all this economically with fewer skilled employees,” he said. “Even molders who are not operating under these conditions today recognize that this is the direction the industry is moving and they are eager to invest in technology that they will need in the years to come. This is what is driving demand for five-axis robots.”

Historically, you needed an articulating-arm, six-axis robot to handle many of those type of complex part-manipulation tasks of the 5X. But the beam-robot arrangement — used by decades in the plastics industry — offers faster movement into the molding space, Sepro said.

Of course, Sepro offers the Stäubli six-axis robots as well, dubbed the 6X.

At Fakuma, two six-axis robots teamed up with three five-axis robots in an iPad relay. Sepro also  showed its Success 7, the smallest in the general-purpose robot line, paired with an S3 servo-driven sprue picker to manipulate jumbo plastic building blocks.

All the robots run on Sepro's controller, including the 5X and 6X.