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Should you wait for UR Gen 7 before buying a cobot cell?
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#Universal Robots Gen 7#cobot welding cell#UR10g-1750#CB7 controller#ISO 10218-1#reshaped-v3

Should you wait for UR Gen 7 before buying a cobot cell?

Uzair bin Haroon

No. Universal Robots launched Gen 7 at IMTS on 14 September with no price, no ship date and no repeatability figure, so there is nothing in it you can set beside a quote already on your desk. Buy the cell you need this year on an arm you can actually get this year.

What is worth acting on is smaller than a new arm. The new CB7 control box is compatible with the e-Series and UR Series force- and power-limited arms already on shop floors. If you own a UR, the arm is not the thing Gen 7 makes old. The control box is.

An operator programming a Universal Robots arm on the TP7 teach pendant running PolyScope X
The TP7 Core pendant and PolyScope X on a Gen 7 arm. Image: Universal Robots, from its 14 September launch release.

What changed that affects a cell you buy this year

One thing, and it is the thing that breaks cells: the separate vision PC. Gen 7's g-Series tool flange carries power, data and safety out to the tool, so a camera or a high-bandwidth sensor connects at the wrist instead of running cable back down the arm, and force-torque sensing is built into the arm rather than bolted on. Inbolt's 3D vision now runs on the UR controller itself. Its chief executive, Rudy Cohen, in the launch release:

With Gen 7 and PolyScope X, Inbolt's vision now runs natively on the UR controller itself, available directly through UR. No external vision PC, no extra cabling.

Whether that matters to you depends on where your camera sits. Will Healy, UR's director of product and industry marketing, told The Robot Report that "nearly every application in robotics is moving towards having a camera at the wrist", and that in Asia nearly every robot he sees already has one on the end effector. If the cell you are quoting has a camera on the arm and a PC in the cabinet, that PC is a failure point you are paying to keep.

The CB7 controller is the other half: 40 per cent more compute in a 30 per cent smaller footprint, with a managed Ethernet switch inside it so a PLC, an HMI and an MES connect without an external switch, and configurable rules for which traffic goes where. It ships in a standalone box and in a compact version that mounts inside an automation cabinet.

What to ask the integrator before you sign

Ask for the numbers UR did not publish, and for the certificates it did. Five questions, in the order they change the price:

  1. Weigh the tool before you pick the arm. Torch, cable package, wire feeder if it hangs on the arm, camera, sensor. The three new arms are named for payload in kilograms and reach in millimetres: UR10g-1750, UR17g-1300, UR18g-950. Ten kilos buys you 1,750 mm of reach; eighteen kilos buys you 950. If your tooling is over 10 kg and your fixture is over a metre across, the middle arm is the one to quote, not the cheapest.
  2. Get the two safety certificates by number. PLd, Category 3 to ISO 13849-1 for the safety architecture, and TÜV certification to ISO 10218-1 and UL 1740 on the arm. Both are claimed in the release. If the paper is not on the table, it is not a Gen 7 cell.
  3. Ask who owns the network. Teradyne Robotics is certified to IEC 62443-4-1 ML3 for secure development, which covers how UR writes its own software. It does not cover the integrator's PLC program, the vision application, or the port someone opens for remote support. Get in writing which of those the integrator owns.
  4. Price the retrofit separately. A CB7 and PolyScope X on an arm you already own is a different purchase from a new g-Series cell. Make them quote both, then compare.
  5. Refuse a spec sheet with no repeatability figure. UR published none on 14 September. The integrator has to, because that number is what your tolerance stack is built on.

If you are sizing a cell around a part rather than around a brochure, send the part. Vesprr Workshop will take the drawing, the tooling weight and the cycle you need, and come back with what the cell has to do before anyone quotes an arm.

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