Tag Archives: Robotic Loading

Automation Part 7 – The Top 3 Mass Finishing and Shot Blasting Machines

Rosler understands that automating aspects of your mass finishing and shot blasting processes has never been more critical.

As we have learned during recent world events, outside factors can have a significant impact on your ability to maintain a largely manual process. Though automated mass finishing and shot blasting machinery does require some human intervention, it can often be operated with a minimal headcount and limited human contact.

In previous blogs, we have explored how an automated-first posture can help you to gain significant efficiencies, lower costs, and increase your competitive advantage. We have also looked at the balance between automation and the environment and have discussed ways that you can mitigate environmental impacts of operating automated mass finishing and shot blasting machinery.

We now conclude our Automation Blog Series with best practice examples of automated mass finishing and shot blasting machines Rosler offers and the associated accessories and components available to help in building your next-generation automated processes.

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Automation, Part 5 – What Automation Hardware is Available?

As previously discussed in our Automation Blog Series, building a robotically assisted process requires evaluating your surface finishing system along with its problems and goals and selecting the right machine and consumables. Automating a mass finishing or shot blasting process also requires selecting the automated hardware that will best achieve your overall goals and provides the most efficiency in terms of time and manual labor.

An experienced partner such as Rosler Metal Finishing can provide insight and advice on the numerous material handling tools specially designed or adapted to mass finishing and shot blasting process improvement.

Work Piece Loading Systems

Including skip loaders, lift and tip loaders, vibratory feed hoppers, and other tools, work piece loading systems are ideal for small- to mid-sized work pieces handled in bulk.

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Automation, Part 3 — What Problems Do You Want to Solve?

We’ve all heard the saying “If it’s not broken, don’t fix it.” At Rosler Metal Finishing, we often view automation as the solution—or fix, if you will—for mass finishing and shot blasting processes in need of added efficiency.

Previous posts in our Automation Blog Series focused on how robots improve finishing processes and why automation is beneficial to your business. We now turn our focus to an organization’s potential motivation for considering automation with the question, “What problems do you want to solve?”

Both mass finishing and shot blasting are specialized processes that require a lot of practical consideration. Automating these processes can deliver great benefits to a manufacturer when properly targeted to a prescribed need, but, if the engineers developing the machine don’t understand your challenges, the solution is likely to miss its mark.

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Automation, Part 2 – Why Automation is Beneficial for Your Business

It’s hard to dispute that technology, on the whole, has made our lives easier and more convenient. Myriad functions have been automated – and improved – to mitigate the effects of human intervention. We make purchases more intelligently, we manage data more efficiently, we can control devices with our voices and eye movements, and we ultimately move through life with less left to chance.

In the world of manufacturing, this mitigation of human intervention promises even greater and more measurable, efficiencies. At Rosler Metal Finishing, quality improvements and cost benefits that have resulted from the mechanization and automation of mass finishing and shot blasting operations deliver dividends that transcend the manufacturing floor.

Rosler Multichannel System
Rosler Multichannel System

Since the first microprocessor-controlled machine appeared on the manufacturing floor in 1974, hundreds of new varieties have been shipped across the world. With each improvement, these automated attendants encompass a larger footprint, are able to handle heavier loads and more axes, and require fewer controllers to do their work, according to a McKinsey study.

Automation has revolutionized smaller tasks as well, including simple parts bin handling, lift assists, automatic media adding systems, or multi-step process control systems (like those where noxious chemicals are dosed, without human risk, into the process).

So how do these automation upgrades pay off for you? Let’s start by taking a look at where mass finishing and shot blasting has fit into the manufacturing paradigm. Then we’ll dive deeper into the benefits of today’s automated processes which have a lasting impact on the finished product.

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Automation, Part 1 – How Robots Are Improving Mass Finishing and Shot Blasting Processes

Automation is changing the way mass finishing and shot blasting processes are delivered. In this seven-part blog series, Rosler Metal Finishing will explain what has given rise to automation trends, the human factors of these manufacturing upgrades, and how such automated processes deliver benefits to your business.

Those of us of a certain age remember a portrayal of robotics that, in hindsight, was rather quaint: human-looking automated machines would be crisscrossing our landscape, delivering us food and wardrobe, pumping our gas, collecting our garbage, or – in a more macabre rendering – leading a rise of the machines that would eliminate the human race.

Rosler Surf Finisher with automation options
Rosler Surf Finisher with automation options

In reality, Rosie the Robot and the Terminator have not ruled the world, as predicted by Hollywood. Today, faceless, automated machines, arms, and processors are streamlining the way in which products and services are delivered.

In fact, a World Economic Forum article found that the 2020s will be the “age of automation,” with manual jobs making up only 35 percent of the manufacturing labor force by the end of this decade (a drop from 48 percent, as measured in 2016).

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