3D printing is widely used in prototyping and in that case usually, industrial type printers are chosen. Does that mean that desktop printers aren’t suitable for sectoral productions? Of course not! Automation leader ABB Robotics chose Ultimaker desktop printer for the prototyping process of its last robot system.
Leading automation service in the world, ABB Robotics started using 3D printing as many global brands. Benefiting from this technology in the R&D process of its industrial robot ‘YuMi’, the company preferred Ultimaker 2 Extended+ printer for this mission.
Traditional gripping systems are typically made from aluminium and it can take about 5 weeks to develop a single iteration. 3D printing, in contrast, takes about an hour. While at first the researchers were hesitant to switch to plastic, an example 3D printed at a fair quickly convinced everyone. It was thus a logical match, and the ABB team started developing their own CAD designs and exporting them to various external services. We’ve previously seen what Materialise added to the YuMi’s very delicate gripping ability.
As co-developer Guillaume Pradels revealed; “We started looking for alternatives and ended up with an in-house Ultimaker 2 Extended+ 3D printer – which proved to be a perfect solution. Already, the benefits are apparent. “As new designs can now be printed from a desktop without having to pass all the stages of ordering and delivery, we save a lot of time and money.”