ARBURG does not manufacture its own robot arms. Instead, the company supplies 6-axis articulated robots from KUKA and Yaskawa as fully integrated, turnkey automation packages under the Powered-by-ARBURG program. The defining feature of this approach is not the robot hardware — which is standard KUKA or Yaskawa product — but the control integration: the robot is programmed, operated, and monitored directly from the ALLROUNDER injection molding machine's SELOGICA or GESTICA controller. The robot and the IMM share one dataset, one operator interface, and one programming environment. This eliminates the secondary controller cabinet, the separate teach pendant, and the integration engineering that a conventionally interfaced robot cell would require.

What does shared-controller integration mean for the production engineer?

In a conventional IMM-plus-robot cell, the injection molding machine controller and the robot controller are separate systems communicating over a fieldbus or hardwired I/O. Programming the robot means switching to a different pendant, a different software environment, and a different set of coordinate frames. With ARBURG's integration, the robot's motion sequences are authored in the same SELOGICA graphical sequence editor that controls mold open/close, ejection, core pulls, and temperature zones. The programmer builds the full cycle — injection, cooling, mold open, robot entry, part extraction, insert placement, mold close — as a single timeline with shared interlocks and alarms. When the mold file is saved or loaded, the robot program travels with it. For high-mix production with frequent mold changes, this cuts setup time and eliminates the synchronization errors that occur when two independently programmed sequences drift out of phase.

Which robot models are available, and how are they selected?

ARBURG qualifies KUKA and Yaskawa 6-axis manipulators spanning payloads from approximately 4 kg (small-part handling, Luer connector removal) to over 280 kg (automotive structural insert loading). The selection process is application-driven: ARBURG's automation engineering team sizes the robot based on the mold geometry, insert weight, required reach into the mold area, and cycle time constraints of the specific ALLROUNDER machine. Suspended (inverted) mounting is frequently used to save floorspace and access the mold from above — particularly on cube machines and vertical ALLROUNDER V and T configurations. A mobile SELOGICA AMS operating panel can be carried around the cell for teaching positions and fine-tuning pick points without being tethered to the main controller console.

What applications justify a 6-axis robot over a simpler linear handling system?

ARBURG also offers linear robotic systems (MULTILIFT series) for standard sprue picking and top-entry part removal. A 6-axis robot becomes necessary when the handling task requires off-axis approach angles — for example, extracting a part around an obstacle in the mold, inserting a flexible cable into a curved cavity path, placing metal inserts at multiple orientations in a single cycle, or performing secondary operations (laser marking, assembly, testing) that require the part to be presented at a specific angle. On cube-mold machines, where four stations operate simultaneously, a 6-axis robot can service the removal station while the other three stations remain in cycle, extracting finished parts in cycle-time-neutral fashion. Examples from ARBURG's application portfolio include overmolding metal bushings for vacuum housings, inserting and positioning flexible cables for grommet overmolding, handling 0.05 g pharmaceutical Luer connectors in cleanroom conditions, and loading 12 metal inserts across four cavities on an automotive connector mold.