If you are considering adding robots to your manufacturing business, OnRobot (headquartered in Odense, Denmark, and with an Irving, TX office serving the Americas) offers free educational tools for you. Housed at www.onrobot.com, the video/animation courses are organized by subject matter: application, product, and robot integration, and contain both general overview subjects as well as specific configuration information.
The company has spent a significant amount of time and energy on this new initiative. OnRobot’s General Manager, Americas, Kristian Hulgard, says this about the program: “It is available to everyone. You don’t need to have a robot. It is designed so that no matter your level of expertise, you’ll be able to learn something. The only thing we ask is that you register on our website before you take one of the courses. We’re here to advocate for and promote automation.”
All the courses are 3D animations of robots, end effectors, components, and materials being used in a variety of applications. Most pertinent to Fifth Wave Manufacturing readers are the applications for CNC machine tending and press brake. We test drove the press brake animations.
When you go to the OnRobot website, you can choose LEARN from the main menu. You can start your learning from any of three choices cited above. Whichever you choose, you are asked to register and immediately thereafter you can choose any educational content on the site.
If you choose “press brake” as an application, you can choose from a number of different animations. In the example below, we have chosen the introductory animation.
Each course contains multiple modules that include an introduction, a deeper look at the topic, what end effectors are applicable to the task, and how the company’s WebLytics software manages the whole process.
The product-based courses are quite similar to the application courses, they move from general to specific, with an introductory module to start and finishing with literal, practical setup instructions. For example, the photo below shows the course for the magnetic MG10 gripper from OnRobot.
The courseware also includes lots of information on many different robots; currently OnRobot includes 14 robot manufacturers’ products and information. More information is on the way, too; Hulgard says, “There is still more to do. This is a pretty new program, and we expect to have all of our courses up by the end of Q1 in 2022.” Following is a look at one of the robot modules, in this case a FANUC CRX robot:
Hulgard sees a great need for this information and a high uptick in demand, in part because the choices have become fewer in recent years. “When I started in robotics, people didn’t want the robot to steal Johnnie’s job. Now, we can’t find any more Johnnies.”
More information: www.onrobot.com