The ultimate in cleanliness: the new KR DELTA robot from KUKA

20 May 2021

KUKA is rounding out its portfolio with the compact parallel arm robot and providing a high-performance production assistant at a good price.

Hygienic and with minimal maintenance requirements – the new KR DELTA from KUKA. Made entirely of stainless steel, the delta robot with a parallel kinematic system is particularly convincing when it comes to challenging pick-and-place applications in the food and packaging industries – even in direct contact with foodstuffs – but also in the electronics and pharmaceutical industries.

The new KR DELTA – the first of its kind at KUKA – offers outstanding performance at a great price. From April 2021, this robot type of the low payload category will be the latest member of the KUKA product family. With its parallel kinematic system and small footprint, the KR DELTA is particularly suitable for pick-and-place tasks. Thanks to its stainless steel body, it is ideally suited to operation in hygienically sensitive areas, such as in direct contact with food or medicines.

Furthermore, the KR DELTA is designed to require minimal maintenance: the gear unit is encapsulated and the ball joints are made of a self-lubricating material.

Precise picking and placing

The parallel arm robot can be installed on the ceiling and stands out with a high degree of accuracy and a cycle time of 0.5 seconds (in the small Adept cycle) with a payload of 1 kilogram. With a reach of 1200 millimeters and a payload capacity of up to 6 kilograms, the KR DELTA offers first-class results in sorting and packaging applications.

The entire body of the KR DELTA is made of stainless steel and is thus temperature-resistant and corrosion-resistant. With a protection rating of IP 67 for the entire robot and IP 69K for axis 4, it is easy to clean and disinfect – even using a high-pressure cleaner with a pressure of up to 100 kPA. At the same time, it meets the strictest requirements of the food industry. From its market launch, the KR DELTA will be TÜV-certified for compliance with the requirements of the US Food and Drug Administration and the German Food and Feed Code.

Perfectly teamed up with KUKA.PickControl and KUKA.VisionTech

The small robot is controlled by the KR C5 micro – the latest control technology from KUKA. To enable it to perform its tasks even more efficiently in terms of resources, the KR DELTA can switch between different production scenarios, such as seasonal packaging variants. It is thus particularly suitable for the consumer goods industry, especially for fast-moving consumer goods. For this, it uses the software package KUKA.PickControl with conveyor tracking and integrated image processing. In combination with a camera and the KUKA.VisionTech software, which recognizes objects even in unstructured environments, even more flexible applications can be defined for the KR DELTA. These range from sorting to loading of different objects.

In the next ten years, robots will find their way into more and more industries. The entry threshold is falling – automation is becoming simpler, more intuitive – and thus available to many more people. This also applies to the KR DELTA’s focus industries.

https://www.kuka.com/