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Cobot Handles Multiple 3D Printers And Achieves Lights Out Manufacturing!
When you start scaling your production and customer base, and you can’t keep up anymore, cobots can provide a helping hand (quite literally). Athena 3D experienced a sudden boost in capacity with just one cobot!
Catherine Bernier
April 09, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes
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Athena 3D (now A3D Manufacturing) is a Phoenix-based, USA 3D manufacturing, CNC, injection molding, casting, and 3D scanning Manufacturing as a Service provider (MaaS).
They expanded in 2019 to offer various additive manufacturing methods to their customers, requiring more “hands on deck.”
Their biggest issue? The complex and time-intensive management of 3D printers.
With an expanding customer base, they needed to run lights out.
But repetitive tasks like managing 3D printers were standing in the way.
Collaborative cobot from FANUC, provided by Delta Technology (a FANUC Authorized System Integrator), allowed them to immediately fill this need.
Cobots are simple to use, safe, and handle repetitive tasks like these for breakfast. So, you can imagine the astonishment from Athena 3D when their FANUC scaled their 3D printers and let them run simultaneously all night long.
Cobot Brand | Supplier | Application |
|---|---|---|
FANUC | Delta Technology | Machine tending |
The Key Problems | How the Cobot Was Implemented | The Results |
The issue of having to manually tend 3D printers, which becomes highly time-intensive after scaling the number of printers. | The FANUC CRX cobot signals the printer to start. After printing, it takes the product out and feeds a fresh 3D printing bed for the next product. | They achieved lights out 3D printing as the cobot can handle the tasks even during the night without human oversight once put in motion. |
The Primary Issue: Exponential Labor Requirement
Most small businesses will slowly introduce a manufacturing line/type into the workflow. However, once you start to grow, the labor issue can quickly become apparent.
When Athena started scaling the number of 3D printers, they hit the wall with how much they could do without introducing additional labor and shifts.
Printers would sit idly waiting for the morning shift, and there’d be too much effort for the operator before they could be put in motion again.
“When that print stops at 2:00 in the morning, we don’t have anyone here. It takes one person a significant amount of time to change a printer over. And when you start to scale, and you have two printers, three printers, four printers, eight printers, sixteen printers, that becomes exponential at that point.”
They needed lights-out manufacturing that’s set up to run without human involvement until the job is done. All tended by an automated system.
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Cobots Fit MaaS Perfectly
Considering the inherent complexity of running multiple 3D printers simultaneously in a relatively small operation, robotics is the only realistic solution.
But not traditional industrial robots. They are difficult to program, set, run, and re-program, and they require significant safety measures.
That’s why Athena 3D turned to cobots.
Collaborative robots can be deployed much faster. Most importantly, cobots can be reprogrammed quickly to meet all flexibility requirements of a MaaS business.
Added another 3D printer? Just introduce it into a relatively simple program and teach the cobot how to approach it for tending. Done in minutes.
Image of the FANUC CRX machine tending multiple 3D printers at the Athena 3D facility. Image source.
“Athena is an additive manufacturing service bureau where we print parts on demand as our customers request them. We are running multiple printers all at one time,” said Taylor
Athena reached out to Delta Technology, a FANUC Authorized System Integrator who specializes in manufacturing automation solutions. Delta Technology figured out a way to use the FANUC cobot to drastically improve Athena’s results.
“After evaluating Athena’s process, we recognized an opportunity to use robotic automation to help them optimize the efficiency of their 3D printers and run lights-out,” said Paul Soucek, Director of Sales and Marketing/New Product Development, Delta Technology.
The FANUC CRX-10iA Cobot Implementation In The Workflow
With the cobot in the picture, 3D printers run round the clock.
Since the cobot communicates with the printers via the API, it can work the entire process.
The cobot initiates the 3D printer.
After the part is done, the cobot picks up the bed with the part and stores it.
Next, the cobot places a fresh bed in the printer.
Finally, it signals the printer to start again, creating a fully tended system.
In the morning, the staff is presented with 3D printed parts from all of the printers cobot tended during the process.
Nearly Doubled The Production
As with many other successful cobot applications, one cobot made a world of difference.
“It’s made a huge difference in our operations. We’re actually able to pump out almost twice as many parts. We’re looking at a 40% increase in utilization of our technology. That’s major. ” - Jacob Moss Vice President of Operations, Athena 3D
Achieving lights-out manufacturing allowed Athena to:
Nearly double the part output.
Increase machine use by 40%.
Redeploy staff to ensure product quality and inspection.
And most importantly… Stop paying for the opportunity loss by using manual operations.
Learn more about their success and the cobot solution below:
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Enjoy your week!
The Cobot Spotlight Team