GUIDE
The most common robotics budgeting mistake is pricing the arm and adding a little. The arm is a catalog item with a knowable price. Everything around it is engineered for your part and your line, and that engineering is where most of the money and most of the schedule go.
End-of-arm tooling is engineered per part
The gripper, vacuum tool, or custom end effector that touches your part is designed for that part. A family of parts needs tool changes or a tool that covers the family, and both take engineering. A part that's easy for a person to pick can be hard for a tool, and the reverse happens too. First-time robotics budgets underestimate this line more than any other.
Feeding the robot can cost as much as the robot
A robot can only pick what something presents to it. If parts arrive in bins, the cell needs a feeder, a tray system, or vision guidance to find them, and that subsystem is priced like the separate machine it is. When a robot cell quote looks surprisingly low, check first what it assumes about how parts arrive.
The risk assessment prices the guarding
A risk assessment decides whether the cell needs fixed guarding, light curtains (a sensing plane that stops the machine when broken), area scanners, or interlocked doors, and that decision moves real money. Collaborative robots reduce guarding in some applications and change nothing in others. The risk assessment is what tells you which one you have.
Integration and programming are the schedule
Controls, conveyor handshakes, HMI screens (the operator's touchscreen), fault recovery, and commissioning are where a pile of hardware becomes a working cell. You can build it with your team, your integrator, or with us, and the quote changes with the split.
Documentation and validation, when your industry requires them
Medical, aerospace, and automotive work often requires documented validation of the cell, meaning proof it does what it claims, recorded in a form an auditor accepts. That's real engineering time. If your industry carries the requirement, name it in the first conversation so it's in the budget from day one.
When a robot is the wrong buy
Some jobs shouldn't be robot cells. A short, fixed cycle repeated all day at several stations is often better served by a rotary indexing table, which beats a robot on cost and cycle time when the motion never changes. And some ergonomic problems are solved by a torque arm with no automation at all.
You leave able to budget the whole cell around the arm, and to spot what a low robot quote left out.
WHAT WE REPRESENT
The lines M6 represents for this application
- FANUC: industrial arms, CRX cobots, and SR SCARAs.
- WEISS: rotary indexing tables and linear transfer for a fixed cycle repeated all day.
- Zimmer Group: electric and pneumatic grippers and tool changers.
- Schmalz: vacuum grippers and end-of-arm systems for the parts a jaw would mark or drop.
KEEP READING
Related guides and pages
- What a Supplier Needs to Quote Your Automation Project
- Industrial Robots, Cobots & AMRs (the application hub)
- Vacuum & Mechanical Grippers, EOAT (the application hub)
- How to Size a Vacuum Gripper: Weight, Surface, Cups, and Acceleration
- Light Curtain vs Area Scanner vs Fixed Guard: Which Is Best?
- 5 Reasons Automation Quotes for the Same Job Differ
COMMON QUESTIONS
Common questions
What does a FANUC robot cost?
It depends on payload, reach, and what the cell needs around the arm, and the arm is usually the smaller share of the budget. Tell us the part and the task and we'll give you a budgetary number for the whole cell.
Would a cobot make the cell cheaper?
Sometimes. A collaborative robot can cut guarding where the risk assessment allows it, and saves nothing where it doesn't. The application decides, and we'll tell you which case yours is.
What should I send for a budgetary number?
The part (or a drawing), what the robot has to do with it, the rate, and how the parts arrive today. Photos of the current station help more than you'd think. The full checklist is in What a Supplier Needs to Quote Your Automation Project.