Robot Standardization Help

Our plant is looking down the robot road and would like to standardize on one type. We had a Fanuc rep. in and overall, liked what we saw. My questions are:

1. What company seems to be most common globably. Meaning, if we were to buy a packaged system from Europe or elsewhere could we get support, interchangable parts, same software here in the states.
2. What company has the best reputation for durability/ lowest time between failure.
3. What company carries a full line from the basic SCARA to the articulated arm?
4. What company has good local support, and technicians available. (This seems to be where Fanuc shines.)

Fanuc is global, but the rep said the software is different in Europe, but I'm not sure about servos/pendants/controllers. Fanuc has also gotten out of the low end SCARA business which is where we would probably have a lot of applications, or has the gap closed in price enough between the articulated arm and SCARA that it really shouldn't be an issue?

Any help appreciated.

OK, I'm going to bring this up one more time. Maybe someone would like to comment.

After looking over the different websites, the Adept robots are very inviting. Have both SCARA and articulated arm models, made in the US, PLC interface.

Anyone have experience with Adept? Is this company used worldwide, in particular Germany? If not, what Robots are most common there? I visited the VW plant in Wolfsburg, and I believe they were using Fanuc.

Flowdam,
I have not much experience with robots however the diecasting side of our plant has several. They were standardized with Fanuc until a couple years ago. They purchased some Reis robots and I have heard them say lots of good things.
http://www.roboticsonline.com/buyers_guide/company.cfm?company_id=313

Good luck with whatever you choose.

Bob

Hi ,

i have worked with most the major robot manufacturers, all have global support. Research ABB , FANUC, MOTOMAN, KUKA, COMAU (think thats how its spelt) i probably missed a few but i know these all perform well and are well supported globally. Price wise they are all similar once you add all the extras, service costs vary alot, also check the service support for your area, if they are a couple of thousand miles away think again. Look at their websites, they should have lots of application examples, see who has the most experiance in the application you intend to use them for

bob & henry- Thank you both for your response.

bob- I will take a closer look at Reis.

henry- your point about the support is well taken. With Fanuc having an engineering and service center 30 min. from our plant they will be hard to beat.
Take Care.

Robotics seems to be a very cut throat business. We have both Motoman and Fanuc robots in our plant. One day, our Fanuc robot has an axis motor burn up, and it started faulting out. Since it was still under warranty, we had a technician come in and change it for us.

He came in, and saw our Motoman robots, and it was almost an instant change in his personality. He seemed a bit nervous when he first saw them, and I over heard him talking to his boss on the phone about how one of our maintanence employees was at a Motoman training session. They seemed very interested in the thought that we were using and training on Motoman robots.

Between the two, the people who program the robots at our shop seem to like Motoman more than Fanuc. For me, a plc programmer, they both seem equally easy to tie in communications between machines. (We used discrete I/O on two of our Fanuc Robot and 3 of our Motoman Robots, and on another 2 Motoman, we used Ethernet).