Kassow

Flexibility with Kassow Robotic Welding Scales up Production

Bountourakis is a Greek manufacturing company specializing in HORECA equipment, supplying Inox stainless steel kitchen units, showcases, and tables—particularly well-known across Heraklion on Crete. To scale up its welding operations, the company turned to Kassow Robots’ partner Netelco S.A. Together, they implemented the KR1805 cobot, enabling flexible welding with both Laser and TIG technologies.

Challenge

A shortage of skilled welders was limiting Bountourakis’ ability to meet growing production demands. “Like a lot of businesses, we find it really hard to find someone who can weld and who can sometimes be flexible with their hours during busy times. As our production is on the island, it makes it even harder,” says Adonis Bountourakis, Head of Production of Bountourakis.

Despite having invested in a laser welder, the company lacked enough staff to operate it, causing significant delays—especially for small parts, which could take days to complete. The goal was to make welding easier, faster, and more scalable.

Solution

Netelco S.A delivered a custom robotic welding cell, equipped with a gripper changer that allows the robot to switch between laser and TIG welding tools. The laser welder, provided by the customer, was successfully integrated into the setup by Netelco S.A. “We had an initial meeting, then the customer sent us the laser welder and asked us to do some welding with the robot. We showed him how it works. He was really happy with it and decided to go for Kassow Robots. It was a really smooth process”, says Anastasios Paraskevopoulos, sales rep at Netelco S.A.

Thanks to the KR1805’s long reach and 7th axis, the robot is now capable of welding a wide variety of parts such as refrigerators, cooking appliances, ovens and washing /hygiene units—and ready to handle more complex tasks in the future.

Benefits

Bountourakis highlights the ease of use, flexibility, and robustness of the KR1805 cobot. The company has significantly increased its welding throughput while reducing dependence on manual labor—scaling production and staying competitive in a demanding market.

Curious to see how others are automating welding with Kassow Robots? Check out another use case where a flexible cobot setup made all the difference.

CMA/Flodyne/Hydradyne is an authorized Kassow Robots distributor in Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa and Northern Indiana.

In addition to distribution, we design and fabricate complete engineered systems, including hydraulic power units, electrical control panels, pneumatic panels & aluminum framing. Our advanced components and system solutions are found in a wide variety of industrial applications such as wind energy, solar energy, process control and more.

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Interview: Kristian Kassow talks about Edge Edition, cobot mobility and innovations

With its Edge Edition cobots, Kassow Robots has miniaturized the robot controller to about 10 percent of its original size and launched the world’s first 7-axis cobots in which the controller is integrated into the base of the robot. In this interview, founder and CEO Kristian Kassow talks about the advantages of this innovation.

Why did you develop the Edge Edition, and had there been anything like it before?

Our goal has always been to make it as easy as possible for our customers to integrate cobots into their production, with an explicit focus on SMEs. Our Edge Edition offers multiple advantages here: it’s designed for industrial use, offers a high level of maneuverability thanks to its 7 axes, and delivers unique compactness. It also has a small footprint of just 160 x 200 millimeters. That is because we have miniaturized the controller to just 10 percent of the original size and integrated it into the robot base. Another benefit worth mentioning is that the Edge Edition can be easily connected to any DC power supply, such as the battery of a mobile robot.

What customer groups are you targeting with the Edge Edition?

Lots of them, all industries with intralogistics tasks at their production sites can benefit from our Edge Edition! The Edge Edition offers the additional benefit of being a multifunctional cobot, allowing users to switch between tasks seamlessly. This includes the ability to use it for the production of Product A, followed by a quality check, and then for palletizing. The Edge Edition comes into play and shows off its advantages when a cobot becomes an efficient assistant to mobile robots.

We believe that mobile applications will be the primary use for the Edge Edition. This means using cobots in combination with an AMR or AGV.

Can you tell us more about your cobots being an assistant to mobile robots?

One way in which the cobot can be made mobile is by moving the lightweight cobot installation to a new location and programming it for a new application. The programming of a cobot is much easier than in the case of a traditional industrial robot. Another way to make the most of mobility is to use it for the same tasks that come up at various locations during the production process. Let me give you an example. A combination of an AGV/AMR and a cobot can take over the task to take care of the loading of boxes which will be used for packaging.

With the Edge Edition from Kassow Robots, the controller has been integrated into the base of the 7-axis cobot.

Why does the Edge Edition contribute to an easy integration of AGV/AMR-cobot solutions?

To summarize: The Edge Edition saves space because the robot arm and controller form a compact unit that can be installed quickly. In addition, as mentioned earlier, the direct current (DC) connection on all Edge Edition cobots satisfies all the requirements for connecting a cobot directly to the battery of an AGV or AMR. At the end of the day, we want to make it easier for our customers to integrate cobots into mobile solutions.

A look at today’s AGVs and AMRs quickly reveals just how little space they offer. Robot controllers are mostly bulky, making it harder to automate tasks. Our Edge Edition cobots feature a slim base. We help system integrators and end customers simplify the implementation of these AGV/AMR & cobot solutions.

All five Edge Edition cobots have a DC connection. They are powered by direct current and can be connected to mobile robots’ batteries, for example.

*This interview was originally published in September 2024 by the German magazine Automation Praxis

If you have any questions or require further information regarding Kassow Robots, please contact us: sales@cmafh.com

CMA/Flodyne/Hydradyne is an authorized Kassow Robots distributor in Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa and Northern Indiana.

In addition to distribution, we design and fabricate complete engineered systems, including hydraulic power units, electrical control panels, pneumatic panels & aluminum framing. Our advanced components and system solutions are found in a wide variety of industrial applications such as wind energy, solar energy, process control and more.

Cobots: a key part of easy industrial automation

Cobots (collaborative robots) are becoming a vital way to help manufacturers improve their productivity. Strong, fast and simple to use, they can make production processes more efficient and business more competitive. We look at what cobots do, how they support production and how Kassow Robots has been growing since the majority stake acquisition by Bosch Rexroth.

A lot has happened in the year and a half since the Danish cobot manufacturer became part of Bosch Rexroth: With the move to a new location, it was possible to expand the production capacity in a highly professional manner and to increase revenue significantly. The team has grown: in Copenhagen, where the company was founded, at the subsidiary in Prague, and within the sales team based in Ulm. Kassow Robots has greatly expanded its global sales activities by participating in trade fairs in various countries and in events within Bosch Rexroth. The dynamic development has one constant: CEO and founder Kristian Kassow as an intensive driving force.

Cobot market continues to expand

Cobots are an important part of intelligent manufacturing and an effective measure to reduce the pressure on costs while securing production in times of workforce lack. They are increasingly used in industry to automate processes which are done in the same working space as human colleagues. Cobots enable small and medium-sized enterprises to automate with their own staff – because collaborative robots can be easily programmed and operated by almost anybody. There is already a high demand for them, and the market is set to continue expanding*.

They can perform a range of jobs easily and offer plenty of flexible automation options with significant benefits:

  • They can be integrated easily into the production process with minimal changes to the rest of the line – providing a cost-effective entry-point to robotic automation, which can be expanded over time.
  • They are fast and accurate, which improves production efficiency and helps lower overall operating costs.
  • They work safely alongside people.
  • Cobots take on laborious or repetitive tasks, enabling the human workforce to focus on more value adding tasks – which helps address skill shortages.

Seven axes and powerful flexibility

At Bosch Rexroth, we see cobots as an important and versatile part of future proof solutions for factory automation – which is why we’ve expanded our product range with the collaborative robots of Kassow Robots.

The company develops, produces and sells unique and efficient 7-axes lightweight collaborative robots for industrial applications. Their cobots are extremely user-friendly, giving companies great flexibility and enabling small and medium-sized enterprises without in-house robotics specialists to achieve complex automation and programming cost-effectively and independently.

Kassow Robots has designed its cobots to work in the tightest of production spaces. Equipped with seven axes, they can reach around corners like a human arm, and can lift a payload of up to 18 kg. Currently the product family comprises five collaborative robot models, with reaches of 850 to 1800 millimeters, and joint speeds of up to 225 degrees per second.

New products are continually in development. At this year’s Automatica, Kassow Robots presented the Edge Series: a prototype of a controller integrated into the cobot base, delivery of which will start in the beginning of 2024. With no extra controller cabinet to be placed near the cobot, the 7-axes cobots can then be used in even more flexible and space-saving ways, which is very important for mobile applications like AMRs (Autonomous Mobile Robots).

Setting business up for further growth

Thanks to the majority shareholding of Bosch Rexroth, Kassow Robots is now expanding its production and its sales activities worldwide. With CEO and co-owner Kristian Kassow leading the company, the team is primed to introduce their cobots on the world stage, through trade show participation and internal events as well as developing the sales partners network. It currently includes more than 60 partners worldwide, and it continues to grow.

Engineer working on Kassow Robots Edge Series

Electronics engineer Nikolaj Thorup Frederiksen working on the new KR Edge Series (image source: Kassow Robots).

To facilitate this growth, Kassow Robots moved to a new location one year ago. The modern building in Kastrup near Copenhagen offers sufficient space not only for increasing production capacity, but also for development activities and offices. Higher production capacity also means more square meters for testing – the Kassow Robot cobots run through an automated test program after assembly, before being packed for delivery.

 In the last almost 18 months we have gone through an exciting and challenging period of scaling up, which we mastered successfully thanks to our highly motivated team. Naturally our primary efforts have been to deliver cutting edge technology in high quality according to the market requirements. 

Kristian Kassow, CEO of Kassow Robots

How do cobots work with Bosch Rexroth products?

All five Kassow Robots lightweight cobots communicate seamlessly with the control platform ctrlX CORE. Additionally, an ecosystem of drivers for easy configuration of peripheral devices, communicating with robots, like grippers and cameras, is being further expanded. So the number of compatible end-of-arm-tools and devices is steadily growing, enlarging the scope of application day by day.

The cobots can also be equipped with the Smart Flex Effector from Bosch Rexroth, which facilitates joining processes, complicated assembly movements, or difficult handling tasks that were previously impossible to master mechanically. Through the unique combination of a sensor system, with kinematics operating independently in six degrees of freedom, this compensation module gives industrial robots a sense of touch similar to the human hand.

Convincing benefits: a major order for cobots from Project Service & Production

For the restocking of cabling machines with bobbins, Project S&P, system integrator and customer of Kassow Robots, specializing in the optimization of production processes, has worked out an automation solution for the textile industry.

Mobile handling solution with Kassow Robots cobot

A flexible solution for the restocking of cabling machines with bobbins (image source: Project S&P and Kassow Robots).

To ensure the smooth changeover of yarn packages, Project S&P developed and built a mobile handling solution with a cobot. The automated guided vehicles are equipped with a magazine, a handling system and a KR1018 cobot from Kassow Robots. A linear axis is part of the solution, so that the cobot can load the cabling machines at different heights.

Beyond taking over the workforce’s job of handling very heavy weights, the automation capabilities of the 7-axes KR1018 contributes to smoother yarn package changes. The triple effect of reduced personnel costs, of better quality at the same time due to more gentle package handling and of the ability of material traceability – all this is an achievement of this automation solution. It would not be possible with a conventional 6-axes robot. The success of this has meant that a larger number of cobots are being delivered to the customer.

CMA/Flodyne/Hydradyne is an authorized Bosch Rexroth distributor in Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa and Northern Indiana.

In addition to distribution, we design and fabricate complete engineered systems, including hydraulic power units, electrical control panels, pneumatic panels & aluminum framing. Our advanced components and system solutions are found in a wide variety of industrial applications such as wind energy, solar energy, process control and more.