With a brand new linear rail, Hirebotics cobots, like ones used for welding above, can prolong past a 68.9-in. attain. | Supply: Hirebotics
Hirebotics LLC has added extensions to its collaborative robots that allow producers to color transferring components and attain giant, difficult-to-handle supplies and assemblies with out altering current workflows. The brand new extensions embrace line monitoring and modular rail capabilities.
The corporate stated these new capabilities prolong the working vary of the cobots, giving producers better flexibility to automate conveyor-based ending operations and tasks requiring giant components. Hirebotics unveiled the applied sciences at IMTS 2026 this week in Chicago.
“Each capabilities come out of the identical drawback, from two instructions: The work doesn’t match inside a set work envelope. One is about how huge or awkward the half is. The opposite is concerning the half not holding nonetheless,” Matthew Bush, the CEO of Hirebotics, informed The Robotic Report.
Based in Nashville in 2015, Hirebotics’ portfolio consists of cobot welding, plasma reducing, and portray techniques powered by the Beacon platform. The corporate claimed that its techniques mix robotics, course of tools, and software program into turnkey techniques that fabricators can deploy and function with out devoted robotics programmers or engineering groups.
Linear monitoring lets cobots paint on transferring manufacturing traces
Line monitoring permits Hirebotics’ Cobot Painter to observe the motion of a component and keep its programmed portray path whereas the conveyor continues working. A sensor detects the coming half and begins the operation routinely.
Whereas conventional robotic line-tracking techniques can require specialised programming and integration, Hirebotics stated its providing operates inside the no-code, cloud-based Beacon platform.
“Line monitoring addresses transferring manufacturing,” stated Bush. “It’s obtainable on the Cobot Painter for conveyor-based portray and coating operations the place stopping the road or eradicating each half to accommodate a stationary robotic would add dealing with and interrupt manufacturing circulation. The cobot follows the transferring half and maintains its programmed portray path whereas the conveyor continues working.”
The road monitoring permits the Cobot Painter to:
- Calibrate line monitoring via Beacon, instructing the robotic the route and motion of the conveyor
- Detect conveyor motion utilizing an encoder and sensor, offering the knowledge the robotic wants to reply to manufacturing in movement
- Keep the programmed portray path relative to the transferring half, routinely compensating as conveyor velocity adjustments
- Robotically detect an arriving half, start the programmed operation and observe the half because it travels via the robotic’s working space
Extending cobot attain for big workpieces
Producers not often work with the identical measurement components that match neatly inside a single standardized robotic work envelope. A Hirebotics force- and power-limited robotic has a 68.9-in. (175 cm) attain, however transferring a 12-ft. (3.6 m) body, a 20-ft. (6 m) structural meeting or a big weldment, for instance, extends properly past that envelope.
Hirebotics clients already use configurations resembling magnetic Magswitch mounting, inverted mounting, and headstock-tailstock positioners to adapt their cobots to completely different purposes. The brand new linear rail, obtainable in 5-ft. (1.5 m) increments or customized lengths, provides an alternative choice by permitting the cobot to maneuver alongside the size of a giant workpiece and attain the following part of weldment or different course of places with out repositioning the half.
The linear rail is designed to work throughout Hirebotics purposes, together with welding, plasma reducing and portray, giving producers one other method to adapt automation to completely different processes and workpiece sizes.
“Linear rail is especially helpful in industries working with giant, lengthy or difficult-to-move components and assemblies, together with shipyards and marine fabrication, structural and heavy fabrication, trailers and truck our bodies, agricultural and development tools, and tanks and vessels,” stated Bush. “When a body, structural meeting or giant weldment extends past the cobot’s work envelope, the rail lets the cobot transfer alongside the work as an alternative of repeatedly repositioning the half.”
“It might probably additionally develop A/B workflows. A cobot can work on one aspect whereas an operator unloads and units up the following half on the opposite, then transfer to the other aspect when the primary operation is full,” he continued. “Producers can use that workflow with no rail as we speak, however linear journey extends the idea to bigger components and work areas exterior a single mounted cobot envelope. As soon as rail motion is automated, transferring between these positions can develop into a part of the programmed course of.”
The rail is accessible now with handbook positioning, permitting producers to increase cobot attain with out the complexity of a conventional automated axis. Place verification inside the Beacon platform is deliberate to information operators via place adjustments, whereas a completely automated model is deliberate for the top of 2026 to maneuver the cobot routinely between positions.
Hirebotics hopes to assist its buyer automate advanced duties
Bush stated Hirebotics pursued handbook and automatic capabilities due to what producers had been asking them to assist automate.
“On the rail aspect, we’ve watched clients get more and more inventive about reaching giant and awkward workpieces, utilizing magnetic Magswitch mounting, inverted mounting, and headstock-tailstock positioners,” Bush stated. “Even with these configurations, producers nonetheless encounter purposes that stretch past the cobot’s mounted work envelope.”
“The linear rail turns that buyer ingenuity into an ordinary Hirebotics providing,” he added. “As a substitute of every producer having to engineer its personal method to reposition the cobot alongside the work, clients may have a repeatable method to prolong the system’s working vary, with that motion finally built-in into the Beacon workflow.”
Hirebotics plans to concentrate on including extra capabilities to Beacon, in keeping with Bush.
“At present, Beacon pauses the method when the cobot wants to maneuver and prompts the operator to reposition it,” he stated. “Subsequent, Beacon will confirm that the cobot is within the right place earlier than work continues. By the top of the yr, the goal is for Beacon to manage that motion itself, creating an automatic seventh axis whereas conserving the operator expertise contained in the platform they already know.”
“Extra broadly, we’re persevering with to develop what producers can automate throughout welding, reducing, and portray whereas constructing Beacon because the frequent platform beneath these purposes. As clients add cobots, purposes and capabilities, we don’t need every addition to create one other working mannequin their workforce has to study,” stated Bush. “The bigger purpose is similar one behind these launches: make automation relevant to extra of the work producers already do with out requiring them to construct a robotics division round it.”
Register now and assist us have fun 20 years of RoboBusiness!The put up Hirebotics provides line monitoring and linear rail capabilities to its cobots appeared first on The Robotic Report.
