Hello,
Just joined the forum
I have been tasked with buying a robot to replace an existing mechanical system for feeding a stamping press. We are a university doing research (mostly in warm/hot sheet forming applications), so continuous production of the same part(s) is not part of our daily life.
This will be the first robot installed in our labs, so we are essentially starting with a clean-slate in terms of brand preferences and compatibility. We will be connecting this to an Allen Bradley PLC via Ethernet/IP (I assume all major robot manufacturers will have this comm available).
What I am looking for help with is which brand would provide the best features for low volume prototyping/research? We will be continuously changing parts, geometries, paths, etc, so I don't want to end up with a cumbersome interface which makes these sorts of changes more difficult. Without having any prior robot experience, it's hard for me to predict what features for a particular brand are going to be beneficial vs ones that are detrimental.
I have been looking at Fanuc (mostly due to user base), ABB, Yaskawa, Kuka, etc. I have been playing with ABB's RobotStudio, which seems like a powerful piece of software. I also like the RAPID style of programming (it's my understanding that not all brands have this high-level programming language?).
Our robot capacity that I am aiming for would be 6 axis, 40-60 kg rated payload, and a reach of 2.0-2.5 m.
Thank you for the advice.
Cheers