REFIT: How we refurbish a KUKA industrial robot at Atlas Robots

At Atlas Robots we start from an unusual advantage in the used industrial robot market: we dismantle the robots ourselves, directly in the automotive plant, where they have been in full production until the last day.

REFIT Process Summary in Figures Origin: KUKA robots disassembled by Atlas technicians at an automotive plant, in production until the day of disassembly. Typical original operating hours: around 30,000 hours, based on an estimated design life of 100,000 hours. Final arm test: 4 hours of continuous program moving all axes. Workshop installation test: 2 hours of full operation under the customer's actual conditions. Factory acceptance: one week of actual production. Estimated remaining lifespan: around 45-50 years working on a single shift. Deliverables: operation and maintenance manuals, electrical schematics, diagnostic report, program backups, recommended spare parts, and CE marking of the cell. Why an automotive robot is the best starting point Working with equipment that has already been operating for several years gives us two guarantees that are difficult to obtain otherwise. The first is that they do not carry hidden manufacturing defects. In industrial reliability, this is known as the bathtub curve: inherent defects manifest themselves within the first few thousand hours of service. A robot with 30,000 hours has already far surpassed this initial phase and is in its constant failure range, the most stable and predictable of its entire lifespan. If a manufacturing defect were to appear, it would have already done so. The second factor is the maintenance history. These robots have received professional preventive maintenance throughout their entire lifespan, the kind typically seen only in automotive plants: scheduled lubrication, battery replacement, gearbox inspections, and incident logging. This standard of care far exceeds the industrial average. From this point onward, the reconditioning process is methodical and always the same.