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Tank Producer Eliminates Rework And Improves Speed By 94%
Tank Technology frequently does custom tank heads with curved geometry, making it difficult to automate their plasma cutting. However, the introduction of the right cobot made all the difference.
Catherine Bernier
April 23, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes
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Tank Technology Inc. (TTI) is a 50-person employee-owned company with a long history of building porcelain-lined water heaters.
The biggest issue they faced recently?
Manual plasma cutting. It’s slow, physically demanding, and just not accurate enough, especially with the amount of customization they offer.
About 25% of their products are custom. Different diameters. Curved surfaces. Tricky geometries. Many automation systems just can’t handle cutting such parts, or aren’t user-friendly for TTI metalworkers to use them in everyday work.
After the introduction of the Hirebotics’ Cobot Cutter, powered by Beacon, TTI was able to eliminate rework in record time. And… They skyrocketed their throughput. Automated plasma cutting reduced the cycle time from 3 minutes to 11 seconds!
Cobot Brand | Supplier | Application |
|---|---|---|
Universal Robots | Hirebotics | Cutting |
The Key Problems | How the Cobot Was Implemented | The Results |
Manual plasma cutting was too slow and inaccurate for custom tanks. Rework rates were high. | The Cobot Cutter was installed and running within hours using the Beacon app, no pendant needed. Staff trained themselves and started cutting by day one. | Cut time dropped from 3 minutes to 11 seconds. Rework from 25% to nearly 0%. New cutting and beveling possibilities. |
Inconsistent Cuts: Manual Wasn’t Cutting It (Straight)
Before automation, TTI was cutting their tank heads by hand.
And it hardly worked… They had a 25% rework rate. Far from ideal…
Plasma cutting was their bottleneck.
Not only was it slow and physically demanding, it just wasn’t accurate enough. Especially with the kind of custom work TTI does. Around a quarter of their products are custom. So, different diameters, fittings, or layouts.
Image showing the inaccuracy of the manually plasma cut tank head.
The variability killed their cutting consistency, and rework was getting out of hand.
“A lot of the rework we were seeing was due to inconsistent cuts or too large of cuts, having to fill in gaps and voids or go back and recut after because the hole was too small, causing additional rework,”
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Why TTI Decided To Use a Cobot For Plasma Cutting
TTI considered various automation systems. Laser cutters, gantry systems, traditional robotics…
But technologies available to them either couldn’t handle the tank geometry or they were too complex to use and required training or a dedicated professional.
Which is why they turned to cobots…
Collaborative robots (cobots) are safer and easier to use than traditional robotics, and some systems are so polished up for intuitive use that almost everyone can use them as soon as they try them.
TTI actually already had a welding cobot, also from Hirebotics. So, they were familiar with the technology and its app-based programming. (Hirebotic’s software is a smartphone app, Beacon.)
Image showing the Hirebotics’ Cobot Cutter at the TTI’s facility in action as it’s cutting the custom holes on the tank dome.
When TTI heard that Hirebotics was introducing their Cobot Cutter, they knew this was their shot at solving their struggles.
“The first part that we wanted to implement on that plasma cutting cobot was a head that is very high in production. It's something that we always classify as a custom head because we had to hand-cut specific openings on this part. And previously with hand-made jigs and hand cutting, there’s a significant amount of accuracy that’s lost with that,” said Eric Parmenter, ASME Production Lead.
How Everything Changed…
They installed the Cobot Cutter and were up and running in just 4 hours.
No teach pendant. No programming headaches.
“At the end of a full week, they [TTI staff] were programming and cutting our own parts, and cutting them exactly how we want them to go. It’s very intuitive, playing with this software and these robots,”
The whole team picked it up fast. The Beacon app allowed them to quickly create and re-create cut paths for their customized tank heads and other parts.
3 Minutes vs 11 Seconds: No More Bottlenecks. No More Rework.
The installation of the Hirebotics’ Cobot Cutter eliminated the worst issues TTI had with tank head production.
“I can confidently say that the Cobot Cutter took our rework from 25% down to almost Zero,” said Eric.
Now, let’s talk about the cycle time numbers. They are absolutely incredible.
Before the cobot: 3 minutes per cut.
After the cobot: 11 seconds.
All while actually improving the cut quality… DRASTICALLY. No more rework or “close enough.”
Image showing a clean cut hole on the tank head as opposed to the jittery, inaccurate hand cuts shown earlier in the newsletter.
TTI’s story is one of those phenomenal cases of cobot implementation where every single processing step that the cobot touched got a completely transformative improvement. This word “transformative” is being thrown around a lot in the realm of automation, but in TTI’s case, it genuinely holds true.
So… What are the requirements for you to achieve similar results?
First, having a process where cobots are a good fit (most are). Second, choosing the right cobot system that matches your production factors. And… the stories where these conditions are met are plenty. Just look at the rest of the Cobot Spotlight newsletters. Cobots are changing the industry one business at a time.
Learn more about TTI’s success and the Hirebotics cobot solution below:
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Enjoy your week!
The Cobot Spotlight Team