Mitsubishi MELFA ASSISTA

The MELFA ASSISTA is Mitsubishi's collaborative six-axis arm, introduced in 2020 to work near people on lighter-duty assembly and packaging. It carries up to 5 kg within a 910 mm reach, so it suits benchtop cells rather than heavy caged lines. Power and force limiting is what lets it be considered for a shared workspace, subject to the application's risk assessment.

Programming leans on hand-guiding, where an operator moves the arm through positions by hand rather than jogging each point from a pendant. That speeds setup on short-run machine-tending jobs where cell layouts change often. It's built for collaborative operation, so it's designed to slot next to a worker rather than only behind a fence.

Floor and ceiling mounting give integrators room to place the arm over or beside a workstation. Six axes let the wrist approach parts from varied angles across packaging and assembly duties. The 910 mm reach keeps its work envelope sized for a single bench or machine front.

It runs on the CR800-05VD controller and rates IP54. The arm also integrates with Mitsubishi's factory automation stack, a fit for lines already standardized on Mitsubishi equipment.

Throughput is the tradeoff, since speed tapers near operators and trails a caged industrial arm on the same task. The 5 kg payload also sits modest against fully guarded robots. Both are expected costs of an arm designed for collaborative, reduced-speed operation.

The standout number is precision: repeatability lands at 0.03 mm. That's tight for a collaborative arm and enough to hold close-fit assembly placement.