African Fusion July 2023

CoastOne, an OEM manufacturer of press brakes for bending sheet metal. CoastOne was founded in Finland and is now collabo rating with Yaskawa Europe to automate the bending process using a tending robot,” says Mostert. As with Weld4Me, this coupling of a tending robot with a CoastOne servo electric press brake is ideal for assisting machine operators to raise the quality and consistency of small runs of identical components. “The robot’s role is simply to pick up the sheet metal and feed it into the press brake, and then to remove it and pass it down the line. The robot transforms bending operations into a completely automated process, while also ensuring better precision and faster more continu ous production. “In high volume bending applications there are specifically designed machines called panel benders that cost several mil lions of rands. With the local supplier of CoastOne equipment, Metal Chip, we are targeting customers currently depending on operators to manually load their bend ing machine, those who don’t have the high volumes but might still have repetitive work and the need to raise their accuracy, consistency and productivity levels.

“On a normal industrial robot, we would offer a week’s training for a new installation. We can now train a Collaborative Robot Welder operator with enough knowledge to start welding in a few hours,” says Mostert.

Metal Chip will be taking care of the Coas tOne press brakes,” Mostert assures. “These two flexible systems fit very nicely in the many shops in the country that do both welding and bending. And they are both now accessible to SMEs and smaller fabrication and manufacturing shops in South Africa,” he concludes. www.yaskawa.za.com

“In terms of a cost comparison, we can add a Yaskawa robot to an existing Coas tOne press brake for about a third of the cost of an automated panel bender, and a brand new Yaskawa-CoastOne system will still be half the price,” Mostert estimates. “With respect to training, service and support, we at Yaskawa will offer full sup port to local clients for the robot, while

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July 2023

AFRICAN FUSION