Machine Tending

A tending robot picks a blank, waits for or triggers the machine door, loads the fixture, and returns for the finished part when the cycle completes. Most cells split the arm's time between the machine, an infeed rack, a finished-part conveyor, and sometimes a gauge or brush station.

Payload usually falls in the 5 to 50 kg window, driven by gripper plus part combined rather than the part alone. Reach in the 1200 to 2000 mm range covers most single-machine layouts; where fencing has to stay minimal a collaborative arm like the UR10e fits, and a standard six-axis like the M-20iD/25 handles most fenced cells.

Dual grippers cut cycle time by letting the robot pick a finished part and swap in a blank in one machine visit. Coolant and chip protection on the arm and end effector matter because the robot lives right at the machine door.

Mis-picks and dropped parts usually trace to gripper wear, inconsistent part presentation, or a machine finished-part position that has shifted. Handshake timing between the machine controller and the robot is the other common cause, and the machine tending IO handshake setup walks through the signals that integrations most often miss.

Very small precision parts, jumbled infeed bins, or wildly mixed part families push the job toward bin picking with 3D vision. For CNC-heavy layouts with chucks and probing, CNC machine tending covers the chuck-specific gripper and gauge patterns.

A common layout pairs an M-20iD/25 or UR10e with a raw-stock cart, a finished-part conveyor, and a machine with an interlocked door. The cell runs a full shift, and the operator swaps the cart once per shift instead of loading part by part.

Tuning the door interlock setup at commissioning avoids most day-two safety headaches. Getting the handshake right up front is much cheaper than debugging intermittent stalls a month in.