The big advantage: customers can continue to use their existing manual vices and keep their costs under control without having to resort to hydraulic or pneumatic clamping devices or retrofitted table feed-throughs. The RoboBuddy thus serves as the perfect complement to complete automation downstream. The integration can be realised without a complex conversion of the clamping devices, only two dowel pins have to be taken up to prepare the manual vice.

The automation extension can be attached via a linear guide or directly to the robot arm.

The RoboBuddy is equipped with a Modbus RTU interface as standard. This enables reliable data transmission via the RS485 serial interface. Additional interfaces such as OPC-UA or digital I/Os can be made available via an optionally available control unit.

Usually the RoboBuddy is used on the robot including the handle unit. The robot inserts the workpiece and the RoboBuddy closes the vice with a tightening torque of up to 100 Nm. The workpiece is thus securely clamped throughout and can be machined. After machining, RoboBuddy opens the vice unmanned so that the robot can remove the workpiece.

RoboBuddy finds the position of the crank pin independently. It can store the position of the crank pin and the clamping width for up to 256 vices and then call them up again.

By adding the RoboBuddy, customers have the option of automating the manufacturing processes with existing resources, even for small batch sizes. In this way, a high degree of automation is achieved in the long term while keeping investment costs as low as possible.