Thanks to its service agreement with FANUC, The Walsall Wheelbarrow Company is confident it can reliably deliver the quality craftsmanship that customers have come to expect. Since switching to FANUC for servicing its fleet of 14 robots, the business has discovered the discernible difference that preventative maintenance and thorough servicing can make to production continuity and the ability to guarantee timely fulfilment of orders.
The Walsall Wheelbarrow Company has 14 FANUC robots in total: 11 R-2000iA models and three ARC Mate welding robots. It originally had a contract with a third-party company to service its robot fleet but was growing increasingly dissatisfied with the level and quality of support it was receiving.
“We were concerned that in the event of any of the machines going wrong, the support simply wasn’t there to get us back up and running quickly,” explains Jonathan Thacker, operations director at The Walsall Wheelbarrow Company.
The company approached FANUC to see what it could offer and was pleasantly surprised by the breadth, scope and robustness of its service contracts, which are designed around a preventative maintenance approach. The Walsall Wheelbarrow Company took out a three-year contract under which FANUC engineers perform annual checks of each system. During these visits, they carry out a thorough inspection of robot and controller condition, teach pendant cable, internal harness and robot connectors. They assess the robots for excessive noise and vibration, and check cable connections, cooling fans, power supplies, transformer tappings and emergency stop operation.
“Under this contract, our robots get a full MOT and a thorough clean, and we get an in-depth report stating what needs to be replaced or upgraded,” says Thacker.
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