Recently, the Realtime Robotics team visited one of our key partners – FFT – the leading global supplier of innovative, flexible, and highly complex manufacturing systems. The reason for that visit was that FFT celebrated its 50th anniversary with an event in Fulda, Germany.
Over the past 50 years, FFT and its 3,000 employees worldwide have led the way in making advanced automated production systems become a reality. The company’s dedication to innovation and its vision for what the future of manufacturing could be has helped forever change the industry for the better.
The event was an excellent gathering of employees, customers and partners, both old and new, and included presentations, exhibitions of the latest technologies, and an evening reception.
Realtime CEO Peter Howard shared his thoughts on the milestone anniversary as well: “Congratulations on 50 years of being a leader in innovation, delivering value to customers, and recognizing the contributions of team members and partners. We are excited to continue working together to revolutionize automated production systems.”
As mentioned earlier, FFT and Realtime have worked together for several years. FFT was looking to optimize the speed and efficiency of their robotic welding systems for a railway project, one which required each of ten robots to weld a total of 25,000 points, or 2,500 a robot. Optimizing the efficiency of this process could never be managed manually, which is where Realtime was able to help.
Our robot motion control and collision avoidance software enabled FFT to calculate the complete path for the robots to make the necessary welding actions, moving as necessary around one another in the workcell, avoiding collisions. FFT used it to create a system where the robots could essentially self-program themselves to complete the railway welding project as efficiently as possible without worrying about collisions or interlocks. For more details, see what FFT itself had to say about the project in a recent video.
From all of us here at Realtime Robotics to everyone at FFT – congratulations on this amazing achievement – and here’s to the next 50 years!
