Case Study: Glidewell Laboratories cuts production time by 9 hours with Universal Robots UR5

Glidewell Laboratories Optimizes Its Production By 9 Hours With Collaborative Robot

Glidewell Laboratories, a medical and cosmetics manufacturer in California, needed to streamline the production of dental crowns. Its challenge was a 10-minute milling cycle that made it impractical to keep an operator at the machine, so crowns were previously loaded in batches every two hours. Universal Robots provided a UR5 collaborative robot to help automate this process.

Universal Robots’ UR5 was programmed to pick crowns from dispensers, load and unload the CNC milling lathe, and place finished parts on a conveyor, with a vision camera guiding it to switch shades when needed. This created a more continuous single-part flow and cut the production cycle from 27 hours to 18 hours, saving two milling operators per shift. Glidewell also noted that the system freed staff for more complex work and may lead to additional UR robots in the future.

Glidewell Laboratories

David Leeson

Engineering Manager