SmoothTool

Project "SmoothTool" data sheet

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 Partnership

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 Project objective

Smooth Robotics is revolutionizing the SME metalworking industry with our SmoothTool innovation. In Europe alone, SMEs working with welding robots spend more than €240M on changeovers between production series, and leave an additional €80M on the table in lost revenues every year, because their factories are not agile enough to profitably produce small series orders. The reason for this is two-fold: 1) with current welding robots on the market, changeover requires offline programming based on a CAD model and; 2) SMEs do not have the in-house skills needed for programming and changeover, so they must hire an external integrator which further adds to their production costs. Smooth Robotics is solving this problem with our SmoothTool - a patent-pending sensor that fits on any robot welding head. Using our joysticks, the operator traces the welding path with the sensor. Our software learns by demonstration and automatically programs the robot. No complicated instruction manual and no expert required. Early testing with customers shows that our SmoothTool reduces changeover time by over 80%. At Birk Stål A/S, a leader in hooks and suspensions, average changeover time is expected to be reduced from 17 to 2 hours, allowing them to accept 50 more orders per year and boost revenues by 30%. There are 10,000 European SMEs that could boost their profits and competitiveness with the SmoothTool. Having already signed contracts and pre-orders valued at €700K, our phase 1 feasibility study will set the bases for successful company scale-up across Europe and then to N. America and Asia. We will perform a private Beta test with 5 test customers, strengthen our IP management strategy and develop a clear go-to-market business plan. Outputs from this project will enable a soft launch product validation as part of our foreseen SME phase 2 project. With a global launch planned in Q1 2021, Smooth Robotics seeks to generate €18M in revenues and grow to a team of 45 employees by 2023.