Siemens recently announced that it has brought the SINUMERIK Machine Tool Robot (MTR) to the North American market, providing 6-axis industrial robots with machine tool characteristics to execute work that previously required dedicated machining centers.

Machine tools and industrial robots have long had delineated working scope boundaries. In conventional arrangements, a machining center was tasked with performing cuts on a programmed path within accuracy bounds of a few thousandths of an inch. These dedicated environments ensured precision but required substantial capital investment. Meanwhile, 6-axis robots in industrial facilities could reach larger workpieces at a lower cost, but they have historically not performed cutting, used instead primarily for lower-precision tasks—such as loading, welding and deburring—due to lower path accuracy.

The flexibility of 6-axis robots comes from their built-in give in the robotic arm's structure, which simultaneously creates path deviation as cutting forces increase. Hard materials such as steel compound the problem because their toughness requires higher cutting forces and more damping.

SINUMERIK MTR addresses these and other issues with a control concept that provides 200 to 300% better path accuracy, along with significantly higher dynamic rigidity than with conventional industrial robots. This supports high-precision path applications, even with hard materials like steel. It also increases productivity by 20 to 40%, making MTR ideal in applications without process forces, such as waterjet and laser cutting.

MTR also expands the established SINUMERIK Run MyRobot /Direct Control solution with new functions and robot types, and SINUMERIK ONE, the native digital CNC platform from Siemens, controls it. Manufacturers can therefore program robots and machine tools in the same CNC environment they already know, without needing to learn separate robot programming languages. Also, the digital twin hosts simulation and testing workflows in completely virtual environments before the robot performs any moves.

SINUMERIK ONE exists in Siemens’ Xcelerator portfolio, the open digital business platform for specialized industries, including aerospace, defense, automotive, e-mobility, and energy applications, in addition to high-precision post-processing of 3D-printed metal parts.

“Manufacturers have always had to choose between the reach of a robot and the accuracy of a machine tool, and the Machine Tool Robot for the U.S. market removes that choice for a large class of parts. This helps our customers alleviate accuracy concerns so they can tackle greater endeavors, such as machining large aerospace structures and additive parts that don’t fit inside conventional machining envelopes,” said Zachary Gray, Head of Machine Tool Systems Americas, at Siemens.