CRX Cobot Welding Automation Ramps Up Pitts & Spitts’ Grill Production
Learn how Pitts & Spitts scaled production with a FANUC CRX cobot—freeing skilled welders from repetitive tasks and doubling their wholesale footprint.
Challenges
- Help Pitts & Spitts increase throughput and keep up with customer orders
- Find a solution that is cost-effective, compact, scalable, and easy to use
- Free up the skilled welders to tackle more intricate work
Results
Employees quickly embraced the CRX Cobot and enjoy working with it
Distribution/market share has doubled throughout the US, Canada, Australia and Norway
Cobot makes it easy to scale production
20% increase in throughput
Story
Pitts and Spitts, a leading producer of high-end smokers and grills since 1983, manufactures a wide range of products, including traditional offset smokers, wood pellet grills, charcoal grills, travel grills, combination pits, and fire pits. Over the years, Pitts and Spitts has developed a reputation for their customized product line – all built in-house by their team of skilled fabrication experts.
Steady growth prompted the need to scale its production operations, respond faster to customer orders, and expand its dealer network. Pitts & Spitts CEO Ryan Zboril turned to ARC Specialties, a FANUC Authorized System Integrator that specializes in providing welding services and automation solutions for a wide range of industries.
After reviewing traditional industrial robots, Pitts & Spitts decided that a FANUC CRX-10iA/L collaborative robot solution would work best for their needs. The CRX is compact and integrates into an existing workspace. Its friendly tablet-style programming made it easy for employees to learn and use in a very short timeframe. In fact, all the employees quickly embraced the cobot technology - they now use the CRX to handle the mundane, repetitive tasks, which frees up their time to do what people do best – the more intricate welds and quality control.
After implementing the cobot automation, Pitts and Spitts has doubled their wholesale footprint and now has distribution and wholesalers all over the U.S. as well as in Canada, Australia and Norway. They attribute this success to the automation experts at ARC Specialties, who provided the right solution for Pitts & Spitts to start their automation journey with the FANUC CRX cobot. The future looks bright, and as production volumes continue to increase, Pitts & Spitts sees the possibility of implementing additional automation at their facility.
If your employees have a smartphone, which everyone does, then they can easily run the cobot.
Ryan Zboril CEO & Owner – Pitts & SpittsFANUC Products Used
CRX-10iA/L
Boost productivity with the user-friendly FANUC CRX-10iA/L cobot featuring a 10kg payload, 1418mm reach, and simple programming.
- Max Payload:
- 10 kg
- Reach:
- 1418 mm
Meet ARC Specialties Inc., FANUC Authorized System Integrator
Since 1983, ARC Specialties has provided welding services and weld automation solutions. Now a 60+ person company occupying a campus with over 75,000 sq ft. housing all the components for a vertically integrated manufacturing solution provider: research, design, manufacturing, assembly, and testing.
About Pitts & Spitts
Based in Houston, Texas, Pitts & Spitts has been family owned and operated since 1983. For 40 years, they’ve been one of the only American fabrication shops that’s focused on smokers and grills. From fully welded barrels to heavy gage steel, Pitts & Spitts brings both function and beauty to life with an emphasis on quality and design, locally sourced materials and unmatched attention to detail.
