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Mercury Marine is a well-known manufacturer of marine engines and propulsion systems. Founded in 1939, it specializes in outboard motors, sterndrives, and inboard engines. At the forefront of marine technology, Mercury Marine is renowned for its high-quality products and excellent customer service.
Mercury Marine invested in several robotic systems to grind, fine polish, and finish their propellers. Programming one of these systems took three people with robotics and process expertise one week to complete using the teach-pendant method. Furthermore, the programmers’ experience with robotics drastically impacted the results.
“A programmer with little experience will have inconsistent robotic movements and speeds, impacting the quality,” said Seth Ehlers, programmer at Mercury Marine. “We generally start programmers in the polishing station, which is more forgiving, and use our more experienced programmers for the grinding station where consistent fluid movements matter.”
Mercury Marine invested in Robotmaster® offline programming software because it enables programmers with varying experience levels to program the robot and quickly achieve consistent, high-quality results.
The resulting quality improvements and consistency eliminated additional rework and extended the life of their grinding and polishing consumables. Additionally, Mercury Marine experienced a decrease in programming time by 50% and nearly eliminated robot downtime.
“Our favorite feature within Robotmaster is the optimization tool. We live and die by it. It makes it so easy to have error-free robotic programs while controlling how that’s achieved.”