They say that time somehow moves slower in the regional areas. Well, that’s not true for one of Robot Spares newest customer, who is a producer in beautiful Kyabram, central Victoria, about 200km from Melbourne.

Like many companies in regional areas, they are a pretty self-sufficient outfit, but everyone needs a little help sometimes.

We received a phone call from them late in 2020, their production was down and they urgently needed an I/O card for their ABB Robot to replace one they thought was faulty. We had one in stock and the planets aligned in their favour because their Financial Director was in Melbourne on other business, so he was in a position to pick up the part and take it back with him on the same day.

By 7pm that evening, they had replaced the card, and unfortunately, determined that the card was not faulty as suspected, and they would appreciate onsite support.

Per and Ash organised to be on site early the next morning and diagnosed that the problem was actually, with the I/O signals in the PLC and not the robot, so the problem was resolved, and they quickly got back into production.

We gladly took the I/O board back into our stock and sorted out the required paperwork after returning to Melbourne.

Early in 2021, we returned to site to carry our preventative maintenance for them.

At Robot Spares, we pride ourselves on customer service, it is one of the reasons Robot Spares exists. We’ve got nearly 100 years of collective experience in robotics, and have lots of spares in stock, including complete robots, we also represent Global Robot Parts (Spare parts for your ABB industrial robots | Global Robot Parts) Swedish company for refurbished parts, normally delivered to Australia within 5 days.

Uptime is as much about the right spare part as it is speed of getting the replacement.

We’ve seen too many small and medium companies come to us, telling us that they bought the “right” part off one of the popular online sales platforms, only to find that its didn’t fit, was from the wrong model or simply doesn’t work.

It’s worse when we get to site, and they give us this “right” part and we have to give them the bad news while their production is down.

Robot Spares is all about getting you up and running as quickly as possible, and we don’t disagree that the world of online buying is great and we fully support it, but we also believe you should do it through a specialist company that will take you through a series of questions about your robot first, and once the question is qualified, then the actual right part can be supplied.

Used obsolete parts are abundant on the Internet and often come with an option for express delivery. The price might be cheap, and sellers even sometimes offer a warranty. At first glance, it seems like a great deal. But the onus to select the right part is on you and often you not only lose more production, but the cost of the part as well

When buying used you don’t really know the conditions of the item. How long has the part been used for, and how intensely? If it has it been maintained?

Then there are the used robots. We’ve seen people spend good money on used robots and then they try and buy that missing part, from the teach pendant to a control board only to find that they are no longer available or will cost more than they paid for the robot. They’ve lost time and their money, and sometimes go away never to automate again.

Just like parts, if you need used robots, you should use a company like Robot Spares to make sure you get a robot that works, that you know the history of, and is suitable for what you want to do.