EVCO Plastics Employs Cobot Colleagues, Enhances Work Environment and Throughput

EVCO Plastics, based in DeForest, Wisconsin, is a bespoke injection moulder that faces the difficulty of staffing round-the-clock manufacturing with rapidly changing processes. A mobile fleet of Universal Robots now conducts a variety of operations including dispensing, assembly, quality inspection, 3D printer harvesting, and packaging. “Three years ago, no one had heard of a collaborative robot. Everyone wants one now.” Bernie Degenhardt, automation manager at EVCO Plastics, remembers his experience seeing cobots emerge before deploying four Universal Robots (UR) cobots that now relieve workers’ repetitious chores throughout EVCO’s Wisconsin facility. “I was looking at other brands, and what I liked about UR is just being able to do fairly complicated tasks with limited training,” he told me.

Jason Glanzer, automation engineer at EVCO plastics, is no stranger to robotics—EVCO has a plethora of classic, Cartesian robot cells—but what impressed him about the cobots was “how nicely they play with others,” as he puts it. “The setup time is the most significant difference between hard automation and collaborative robots.” These cobots function well with a wide range of products–“UR has been on top of continuously improving compatibility, which was important for us,” he added, referring to the UR+ platform, which certifies grippers, vision cameras, software, and other peripherals to work with UR cobots.