Machine Design, June 21, 2023
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Kane Robotics was founded in 2019 by John Spruce, an executive and entrepreneur who is able to draw from two decades of experience leading large-scale automation projects and engineering and manufacturing services for the aerospace and defense industries.
The company developed the first cobot for composites sanding. Kane highlighted its stealth at material removal with demonstrations of its GRIT™ cobot solutions, including sanding off coatings, grinding welds and polishing metal finishings. These capabilities help manufacturers with removing coating and sanding surfaces for paint preparation or repairs on helicopter main rotor blades, polishing fighter jet canopies, sanding primer from machine components and deburring metal castings.
At the ATI Industrial Automation booth [at Automate 2023], for example, Kane demonstrated how the combined solutions of its GRIT™-ST cobot system with ATI’s CGV grinder, Universal Robots’ UR10e cobot and 3M’s Cubitron II abrasive media work together to efficiently and safely grind welds.
The company noted that ATI’s CGV grinder has built-in compliance so the unit can compensate for irregularities in part surfaces. The grinder’s compliance force is adjustable, enabling users to make changes in real-time and CGV’s sensing data allows for process validation. Paired with Kane’s GRITcobot system, the Kane-ATI solution works alongside humans to perform a wide variety of labor-intensive tasks, while avoiding rework and downtime.
“If a person’s doing it, we can train a cobot to do it,” said Kane Robotics COO Alan Hiken. “We’re not reinventing new processes to automate; we’re helping manufacturers move to new tools that will make them more efficient and protect their health.”
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Automating dull and dirty processes with collaborative robotic solutions
