Revolutionizing Robotic Reliability with Winchester’s Overmolded Coil Cords

Customer Challenge

Winchester was approached by a robotics company that was having issues with the cable assembly on their robot. The customer had started by using an off-the-shelf assembly for their robot but found it as not an optimal solution and was causing premature failures of the cable. The premature and sporadic nature of the failures were sometimes causing line down situations for the end-user, costing both time and money. The customer initially was interested in a different type of straight cable assembly and mentioned that they liked the idea of a coil cord but hadn’t found a reliable partner with those capabilities.

Challenge Review

The customer had dealt with premature failures with an off-the-shelf cable assembly for several years and would simply replace the cables when they failed, however this was not optimal for the end user. Among the end uses, these robots are used in medical device manufacturing where continued uptime and repeatability are critical. Additionally, the robot’s small form factor made the standard cable assembly protrude noticeably off to one side, occasionally colliding with other components within the cell, leading to disruptions.

Winchester Solution

After collaborating with the customer to understand how the robot was being used and the types of industries the robot was being used in – those where precise degrees of accuracy and continuous uptime are required – Winchester engineers designed three overmolded coil cord options for testing.

Customer Improvement

Winchester’s customer started testing the samples and after several weeks selected one of the samples that surpassed 2 million cycles and had the look and feel they wanted for their end users.

Winchester’s overmolded coil cords allow the customer to offer a high-quality, innovative, robust solution to ensure continued uptime of their robots.