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- Drop Your Welding Cycle Time by 86%? This Manufacturer Did It With a FANUC Cobot!
Drop Your Welding Cycle Time by 86%? This Manufacturer Did It With a FANUC Cobot!
Last Arrow Manufacturing needed to automate their welding, but with flexibility that can handle low-volume, high-mix parts. The right cobot made them far more competitive and improved their market position.
Catherine Bernier
June 25, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes
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Last Arrow Manufacturing, an Ohio-based manufacturer, was struggling to handle the workload. Manual welding can get out of hand, especially when you are a contractor providing services to various industries.
Last Arrow deals with constant part changeovers as a business that partners with multiple customers. They service transportation, forestry, mining, firefighting, handicap accessible vehicles, medical, large hydraulic trash pumps, oil and gas, and other industries.
With such a diverse customer base, you need A LOT of production flexibility. Sure, manual welders are flexible. And they do have 125 employees, but they wanted to put their skills where they matter the most, not repetitive work. That’s a job for robots.
So, Last Arrow tried their hand with FANUC welding cobots, and… Achieved exceptional results! Not only did they dramatically improve productivity, but they also improved access to the broader market.
Cobot Brand | Supplier | Application |
|---|---|---|
FANUC | Lincoln Electric | Welding |
The Key Problems | How the Cobot Was Implemented | The Results |
The need to automate welding of high-mix, low-volume parts in a flexible shop environment. | The FANUC CRX-10iA/L welding cobots are placed on mobile carts and welding tables, allowing for flexible welding. | 86% cycle time drop going from 2h to just 17 minutes per weldment, and access to more markets. |
The Need To Automate Small Batch Manufacturing
When you weld 10, 50, or even 100 pieces… That doesn’t justify traditional robotic welding cells.
Besides, in a contract shop environment, you can’t just quickly introduce a caged robot at any place.
“We don’t make high-production parts, so there’s constant changeover in our business. Therefore, we needed [a welding robot with] flexibility,” said Matt Bowling, president and co-founder at Last Arrow Manufacturing.
So, what’s the solution that ticks all the boxes?
Employee safety?
Flexible automation?
Simple programming?
Small footprint?
Immediate deployment?
Collaborative robotics. Cobots tick it all.
Finding the right cobot system handled all of these and more for Last Arrow Manufacturing. The cobot addition significantly improved their shop capacity and capabilities, making it one of the most effective pieces of equipment they acquired.
FANUC CRX-10iA/L welding a part at Last Arrow Manufacturing. Image source.
Why FANUC?
Last Arrow needed flexibility and quick programming.
Got a new order this week for 57 parts? Expecting another 30 different parts order in 3 days? Yup. A job for a quick-to-REprogram cobot. It’s not enough just to program quickly, but to alter the programming and move the cobot around the shop. And that’s precisely what FANUC’s cobot, paired with Lincoln Electric’s power supply, brought to Last Arrow.
After several attempts to automate, Matt met with Brian Sullivan, district sales manager at Lincoln Electric Co. Lincoln is a FANUC robot distributor, and they helped them get started with their first two welding cobots. After a brief demonstration, Bowling was impressed and made the purchase shortly after.
“CRX-10iA is an industrial robot, just like the yellow arms that we’ve been working with for all these years. The primary way we are promoting this solution is we’re putting the CRX cobot on a cart, which allows customers to be able to move them from place to place within their shop, depending upon where you are stamping or tacking things together. You can bring the robot to the work instead of bringing the work to the robot.”
Perhaps the primary reason why Last Arrow chose the FANUC system was the training. You can literally learn how to program it within a couple of hours, as Sullivan noted.
Programming the FANUC CRX-10iA/L using a simple-to-use tablet interface. Image source.
Add in the relatively simple teach pendant tablet as an interface… And Last Arrow got an industrial-grade, flexible automation system they could control with a touchscreen.
“It’s the easiest programming I’ve ever done. And I’ve got over 20 years of experience in robotic programming, and this is the most user-friendly tablet I’ve ever used,” noted Scott Musser, Lead Programmer at Last Arrow Manufacturing.
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The Results: Last Arrow Manufacturing Didn’t Just Move The Needle
The Lincoln-powered FANUC CRX-10iA/L changed things… Drastically.
Last Arrow had gone from 2 hours of welding time for one of their parts to 17 minutes. That’s 86% time savings!
Likewise, they’ve went from producing 12 finished units per week for the customer to over 20! That’s a massive improvement and proof that eliminating bottlenecks lets you jump forward instantly.
But it’s not just about speed or weld quality improvements.
The intangibles…
That’s where you truly benefit from well-selected cobot systems.
Last Arrow didn’t just grow their business, they opened themselves to new markets and opportunities. When you demonstrate to your customers that you can produce parts with exceptionally uniform welds, repetitively, you are opening doors for your business. And that’s the most important effect of cobot welding Last Arrow experienced.
Learn more about Last Arrow’s success and FANUC welding cobot using the links below:
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Enjoy your week!
The Cobot Spotlight Team