Greatoo is accelerating its pace to develop industrial robots. In 2013, Greatoo invested 1 billion yuan in industrial robots and the industrialization of the outfit for intelligent automatic production line and set up the business division of robots. On December 5, 2014, Greatoo singed a cooperative contract with HEAVEN-SENT Capital Management Group in order to come up with a better way to merger and integrate domestic and foreign companies. Besides, Greatoo invested 5 million yuan to establish a subsidiary in Wuhu.
Since the establishment of the company, Greatoo has always focused on researching and producing radial tire molds. Driven by the accelerating pace of transforming and upgrading industries in China, in 2010, Greaetoo began to research and produce automatic manipulators and gradually produced industrial robots, unite control systems, RV reducers, flexible production line and the dispatching system for the production in intelligent workshops. Nowadays, the company has provided a series of service for industrial robots which feature functions of perceiving, analyzing, deducing, making decisions and controlling.
It’s said by the reporter that there are about 300 employees in Greatoo’s business division of industrial robots, nearly 100 of them in the research team.
Xuxu Zheng, Greatoo’s president said that there was a bright prospect for the application and development of robots. The company will comprehensively develop the market of robots under a solid foundation of being the leading company in tire industries in the future. Now, the company has developed four main industries including tire molds, curing presses for tires, industrial robots and precision machine tools.
“Domestic robot industries look to further increase. Because the tire molds Greatoo produced in early time are customized products with obvious individual characteristics, so in order to have a better solution of flexible manufacturing, intelligent manufacturing become the first choice to upgrade the company’s technologies.” Hao Wu, the secretary of the company’s board said to the reporter from Gaogong Robots. In this process, with advantages in tire industries, Greatoo has successfully seized the opportunity of development and gradually expanded its industries, successfully transforming from “manufacturing” to “intelligent manufacturing.” With the whole body, core components and unite control systems of industrial robots, Greatoo has developed an integrated application model, which is more competitive than other new robot industries.
Hao Wu said that during the process of developing robot-oriented intelligent equipment industries, there is serious reliance on the exports of core components, which is harmful for the long-term development of companies. Therefore, companies need to consider their own situations and make breakthroughs, giving play to the supportive role of core components.
“Greatoo has engaged in precision manufacturing for many years, so the company has mature technologies and rich resources of advanced manufacture equipment. By persisting in strengthening innovative ability and integrating and optimizing inner and outer resource, Greatoo has made a great breakthrough in the research of the localization and industrialization of high precision RV reducers, the core components of robots. Now, the company has finished designing and producing many types of RV reducers.
General speaking, RV reducers of robots are mainly divided into two types, RV reducers and harmonic reducers. Compared with harmonic reducers, RV reducers has a higher demand for technology and domestic market for them are not mature. A few of enterprises will take RV reducers into consideration. So it’s very to develop a brand for RV reducers in China.
According to the data from Gaogong Robot Industry Institute（GRII), currently, there are over 420 robot enterprises in China, but only 13 of them make researches in reducers and only 5 have made initial progress in RV reducers. There are great difficulties in researching RV reducers.
“As one of a few of domestic enterprises making a breakthrough in RV reducers, Greatoo’s RV reducers feature high precision and stability, high efficiency, balanced transmission, low noise and long service life, and the company’s products have been applied in the company’s robots.”Wu Hao said.
As the core components of industrial robots, high precision reducers take up 34% of the whole costs of robots. The reducers used in robots’joints have short transmission and high power and are small, light and easy to control. Generally speaking, a robot needs to be equipped with 4 to 6 sets of reducers.
An insider says that if a common robot needs 4.5 sets of reducers, then from 2014 to 2018 in our country, the demand for reducers for robots will increase to 189, 000, 236, 000, 296, 000 and 462, 000 sets respectively.
Although there is great potential for the demand of using reducers in robots in China, currently, domestic market is occupied by foreign brands, especially Japanese companies which monopolize 75% of the global market of high precision reducers. Few of domestic products are in the market. Wu Hao said that Greatoo’s RV reducers is mainly used in the company’s industrial robots, not selling to other companies.
It’s said that now, Greatoo’s RV reducers have successfully passed the product examination. At the same time, the company is testing the industrial robots produced in small scale. In the future, the increasing investment in the project and the improvement of former technologies will provide solid foundation for the successful transformation of the company.
It should be noted that besides for the RV reducers used in deep ploughing robots, Greatoo also pay attention to the research of the integrated application of robots.
In 2014, the first automatic line of industrial robots Greatoo designed for Zhongce Rubber Group came into use. The tires, which are sprayed by the conveyor belts of rollers, are used in this automatic line. Consisting of 6-degree industrial robots weighing 50 kg, robotic electronic control, locating mechanism of tires, the logistics line of tire vehicle and barcode recognition machine, the automatic line has the functions of automatic transporting, automatic loading and automatic changing of tire vehicle and has an integrative application model when it can be used with curing presses.
“Greatoo independently designs, produces and control the company’s industrial robots. The company targets tire enterprises and machine processing industries, like the representative company, Zhongce Rubber Group.” Zheng Xuxu thought that the development of robot industries in the future should be considered with long term perspective. According to the market of using robots in traditional tire industries, over 10 billion yuan is expected reach in the market for the transformation and upgrading of automation in the future.
