An extremely high‐pressure jet of water is an efficient method of cutting soft materials, and combining the waterjet process with industrial robots is an economic alternative to the traditional punch tool method of producing complex‐shaped components for car interiors, such as floor carpets,...

A new application for the industrial robot has emerged, inspection, with two players emerging, Stäubli and Amatec Robotics of the Kuka Roboter Group. Both companies’ systems and their competing benefits are discussed. Until this new development, car bodies were inspected on‐line with arrays...

A demonstrator cell has been developed at Airbus UK for building large aircraft wing box assemblies by a partnership of six companies partly funded under the UK government’s civil aviation research and demonstration (CARAD) programme. The cell has shown the feasibility of assembling the three...

Describes an installation at Aerospace Composite Technologies in Luton to apply ice protection heating elements to the leading edge portion of the main rotor blade fitted to the Westland EH101 military helicopter. The elements comprising a layer of porous conductive metal are plasma sprayed...

“Productivity Partnerships”, a regulars series of demonstrations held at The 600 Centre in Shepshed, saw the UK launch of a new machine loading robot system by Fanuc Robotics. A description is given of the rail‐mounted 6‐axis robot together with some of the claimed benefits. It is a...

Motoman Europe has opened new facilities at its UK operation in Banbury. During the ceremony news was given of the company’s market share in both the UK and all of Europe. Details were also released of technical developments including synchronous multi‐robot control, large gantry systems,...

Reviews robotic exhibits at the UK Automation and Robot (AandR) show held alongside the UK's major manufacturing product exhibitions owned by the UK Machine Tool Technologies Association (MTTA), including MACH 2002. A centrepiece of the AandR show was the “robot island” sponsored by British...

Describes some of the papers presented at an international colloquium on autonomous mobile systems held to celebrate 10 years of the Fraunhofer Institute for Factory Operation and Automation (IFF) in Magdeburg, Germany. Following definition of a mobile robot, papers on wheeled and biped robot...

Machine tending is the oldest of applications for the Industrial Robot , and is even more economically beneficial today than it was in 1960 when the first robot was installed at a die casting machine. Robots now serve many more types of machines and a number of recent applications are described....

A profile of Birkby's Plastics, a UK‐based leading European plastic moulding company that has successfully completed a management buy‐out. Birkby's supplies to the major automotive OEMs and Tier One manufacturers and to leading business machine OEMs. It is more than a standard trade moulder...