TL Aerotek, a small job milling shop customer, experienced a large influx of orders. To keep up with demand, they sought a solution that would alleviate labor uncertainty and help to grow the business. TL Aerotek turned to their long-time supplier of milling machines for support, Expand Machinery. Expand discovered an opportunity to automate the process of loading and unloading materials for the customer’s machine tool, which already used a Mitsubishi Electric M8 Series CNC.The solution, they hoped, would alleviate the need for manual, constant machine tending. Expand Machinery suggested using Mitsubishi Electric Automation’s engineered solution, LoadMate Plus, to automate the machine tending process.

LoadMate Plus is a plug-and-play solution offering simplified robotic applications and is completely configurable, perfect for stand-alone cells, or to be integrated into a larger solution. For TL Aerotek, the 4x4 machine tending solution was connected to their existing machine tool and was equipped with an RV20, six-axis robot arm. With a simple connection via Ethernet to integrate the LoadMate Plus with the CNC, the compatibility is built right in. After the integration of the solution, the system ran unattended for 24 hours, tripling the normal output that TL Aerotek had originally been experiencing.

“Both companies give me what I need: super support, performance, and reliability,” said Tai Le, owner of TL Aerotek. “Because my machines are supported by Expand and Mitsubishi Electric, I know that if I do need help, I’ll have it.”

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