A CNC cell, injection moulder or test rig runs a cycle, and a person stands at it to load and unload. The task is short, identical and paced by the machine — the worst possible use of an operator and the easiest possible thing to automate, provided the cell does not have to be rebuilt around a fence.
The constraint that decides everything is changeover. A shop that runs batches of two hundred cannot afford a robot that takes a day to reprogram.
Requirements are stated with the reason they exist. A requirement without a reason is a preference, and preferences are how a shortlist quietly becomes a recommendation.
Enough to cover a machine door and lift the part with the gripper's own mass included.
The fixture tolerates less than the robot's own datasheet suggests once a gripper is on the end.
Collaborative operation is a property of the application, not of the arm; the assessment is what lets the fence come down.
Small-batch shops reprogram weekly. If that needs an integrator, the payback never arrives.
Grippers, tool changers and vision come from third parties; a closed flange narrows the shop to one supplier.
These are not weaknesses to trade off against a high score. Any one of them ends the conversation, which is why they sit outside the scoring entirely.
Shipping robots in our catalogue whose class matches this job, listed under the industrial weighting so you can scan them — not a recommendation. The arm lives on a production line where downtime is counted in parts, so readiness and maintainability outrank experimentation.
Order follows the industrial profile score. Requirements and disqualifiers above are editorial; they do not remove robots from this list. How the score works
Compare candidatesThese are kept off the candidate list rather than mixed into it. A candidate list is something you can act on, and hardware nobody can order does not belong on one.
Rainbow Robotics
The oldest job here and the least glamorous. The technology stopped being the question a decade ago; what still fails is scoping — cells get automated that run twice a month, and the arm ends up parked beside the machine it was bought for.
