Acme’s robotic polishing solutions give companies the opportunity to enhance production efficiency and repeatability while reducing unit cost. With 3500 robotic systems deployed worldwide, Acme continues to use their expertise to lead the industry.

Robotic polishing automates the process of removing material from a workpiece with abrasives. Usually, a manual polisher will hold an individual part to a moving abrasive belt or wheel, resulting in an inconsistent finish from part to part. But, with a robotic polishing solution, companies can increase the speed, consistency, and effectiveness of that same process, resulting in a superior finished product. Robotic processes also increase safety and provide better working environments.

Speed and Efficiency

Production processes that utilize manual polishing prove to be slower, less effective, and more costly than robotic polishing solutions. Manual polishers need to correct for human error consistently, resulting in the use of more abrasive materials, time, and energy to create a final product.

Robotic polishing fixes this issue. Through the use of a robotic polishing solution, companies can reduce human error and match or increase the speed in which they produce their products. Though other automated polishing processes do exist, robotic polishing simply offers a flexible, more efficient option that allows companies to dial in their polishing process with precision.

Consistency of High Quality

Manual polishing is subjective. Regardless of how consistent a manual polishing process looks, each finished product will be different. Robotic polishing, on the other hand, ensures that each finished product will be indistinguishable from another, creating an unmatched level of consistency and repeatability.

Media life management plays a key role in this consistency. With a manual polishing process, human error does not effectively account for the consumable nature of abrasive materials. But Acme’s media life management technology does.

“Because abrasives are consumable, their effectiveness wears overtime,” says Patrick O’Neil, Sales and Product Manager at Acme. “Media Life Management combines factors such as speed, force, and time to extend media life, producing a consistent finish every time. Our rule of thumb is that a robotic finishing solution will increase media life by at least four times.”

Flexible and Customizable

Acme has integrated robotic polishing solutions into a wide variety of industries, from aerospace and medical implants to consumer products and firearms. Using this expertise and experience, Acme can incorporate robotic polishing systems as a central component to any automated finishing solution.

But it all revolves around the customer’s needs and processes. “We understand that the customer is the expert in their own process,” says O’Neil. “Acme’s robotic polishing approach is customer-driven. We start with a customer’s current process, and then employ our finishing expertise to engineer a process that improves part quality and satisfies production needs.”

Leading the Way

For over a century, Acme has pushed the finishing industry forward by pairing the newest technologies with their proven process for creating effective solutions. This industry expertise allows Acme to utilize innovative products to create better solutions and give customers a competitive advantage.

Robotic polishing serves as a key factor in providing customers with that advantage. Acme leverages their experience and pairs it with the right technology pieces to give each customer the best solution for their individual production process.

“Polishing is about creating the right recipe,” says O’Neil, “and robots are a piece of that recipe.”