Repartly, a startup based in Guetersloh, Germany, is using ABB’s collaborative robots to repair and refurbish electronic circuit boards in household appliances. Three GoFa cobots handle the sorting, visual inspection and precise soldering tasks enabling the company to enhance efficiency and maintain high quality standards.
The company aimed to fulfill its promise of providing same-day repair services while ensuring quick, consistent, and high-quality repairs for customers’ electronic appliances. Additionally, they needed to scale up operations to efficiently handle a growing volume of repairs.
ABB’s GoFa collaborative robots are significantly boosting the productivity of Repartly’s sustainable business model. By automating manual tasks such as sorting, inspecting incoming electronics, and soldering, the three cobots efficiently manage increased repair volumes. This automation allows Repartly to maintain its same-day service, enhancing productivity and further supporting the circular economy.
Repartly demonstrates the value of their efforts by repairing and refurbishing printed circuit boards (PCBs) from defunct or defective household appliances. “We started with electronics for washing machines,” said Lennart Osthoff, CEO and Founder of Repartly. Today, they offer a wide range of refurbished electronics and mechanical components for well-known brands, including washing machines, dryers, dishwashers, ovens, induction cooktops, microwave ovens, refrigerators, and highend food processors.
With their sustainable business model, Repartly aims to shift from a throwaway society to a more circular economy. “The longer a device is used, the better its ecological footprint,” explained Osthoff. “In other words, repairing saves a considerable amount of money, resources, and emissions.’’
For customers of Repartly, this is as easy as it could be. In a first chat with the experts in Guetersloh the cause of the failure is determined. If the electronics is defective, Repartly will support the customer with a send-in repair or establish contact to a local technician. “When we receive the electronics, we will repair it on the same day and return it in fully functional condition to the customer, charging a previously agreed fixed price”, said Osthoff. If the electronics turns out to be beyond repair, the customer will immediately receive an email with an offer for a refurbished spare part.
With a team of five, Repartly currently repairs a growing four-digit number of electronics from all over Europe every month. To be able to ensure its same-day service even with increasing order volumes, the young company brought in the help of three collaborative robots (cobots) of the ABB GoFa family using a monthly leasing model.
For a company championing sustainability, ABB’s Robotics as a Service (RaaS) model proved to be the ideal partner. The RaaS model seamlessly aligns with the principles of circular economy by allowing companies to preserve valuable technological resources and fostering reusability of products. With RaaS, companies have the flexibility to access robotic automation when needed and can return the robots after use, allowing ABB to repurpose and redeploy them elsewhere.
“As a startup, ABB’s Robotics as a Service model immediately convinced us, the capital expenditure is minimal. ABB’s technology offers us maximum flexibility, allowing us to evaluate new ideas in the used and refurbished electronics market and keep our proof of concept lean,” said Osthoff.
The Repartly team uses cobots to handle monotonous tasks like sorting incoming electronics. The circuit boards undergo an automatic visual inspection for anomalies and irreparable damage. Based on a color-coded system, the cobots sort the electronics into three categories: waiting for customer feedback, manual workshop for complex repairs, or automated repair station for routine refurbishment.
The other two GoFa cobots at Repartly’s automated soldering station handle the removal of defective components and the insertion and soldering of new ones. This process, while simple, is complex due to the varying behavior of electronics based on their age. The overheating the PCB can cause damage, necessitating extensive testing to determine the correct values and movements for the cobots.
With no comparable applications on the market, Repartly performs pioneering work with its automated electronics repairs.
“A huge advantage is the easy-to-use software provided by ABB for programming the cobots,” with the intuitive leadthrough programming of the ABB cobots, the complex movements required for soldering could be implemented with ease,’’ highlighted Fabian Wiesing, Technical Manager, Repartly.
Before Repartly started implementing the GoFa cobots, the qualified electronics technician attended a one-week training with ABB Robotics in Frieberg, Germany. According to Wiesing, the endof-arm ecosystem MATCH, a valued partner of ABB’s Robotics Ecosystem program, is another benefit that allows Repartly to flexibly integrate different third-party grippers in a plug-and-play fashion. The result is convincing: The startup has already filed a patent application for its automated repair station.
By automating the process, the startup not only ensures the scalability of its business model but also secures the long-standing technical knowledge of its employees, which is incorporated into the cobots’ repair and refurbishment operations. GoFa stands out among all existing cobots in its class with a class leading speed of 2.2 m/s, providing a significant advantage for companies looking to accelerate automation and enhance productivity. Its high speed enables Repartly towards faster production delivers consistent quality.
“The GoFa cobots can perform the repetitive repair processes quickly, accurately and with consistently high quality”, said Wiesing.
This is a significant benefit, especially when it comes to refurbishing huge numbers of disused electronics of the same type that Repartly receives from various recycling companies.
On average, the manual refurbishment of a PCB takes 20 minutes. “Although our project with the three GoFa cobots is still in a kind of prototype phase, we could instantly reduce the processing time by half,” summarized CEO Osthoff the positive outcome. The time gained can now be used by the team for more challenging repairs and for expanding the business into other industry sectors. The portfolio has already been extended to include electronics of photovoltaic systems, heat pumps, garage door drives and TV sets.
This article was contributed by ABB (Cary, NC). For more information, visit here .
