FANUC CRX-5iA

What it's for

The CRX-5iA sits in the middle of the family: 5 kg payload, 994 mm reach, six axes. It is the size that fits where 3 kg is too little and 10 kg too much. The manufacturer names assembly and pick and place; a food-grade variant is also available, with grease approved for contact with food, which opens the door to food processing.

A typical pick and place task is packing: the cobot takes finished packages and arranges them in a carton. No fencing, provided the risk assessment confirms it, because the robot stops on contact with a person. A reach of 994 mm is enough to serve the whole carton without repositioning the station factories.

The second area is assembling medium-sized parts: housings, modules with connectors, controller assemblies. The third is logistics tasks in packing, where the arm takes goods from a bin and places them on a conveyor warehouses. The food-grade variant matters for bakeries, meat processors and snack producers; certification of the specific variant should always be confirmed with the supplier, however, since full documentation is not publicly available.

A general description of the family, including the tablet interface, is in the article on the CRX series “FANUC CRX: The Cobot Series with 8 Years of Zero Maintenance”; accessory makers such as OnRobot can help narrow down the choice of gripper.

Who it's for

Worth considering for: food and packaging plants looking for a cobot with a food-grade option; assembly shops working with medium-sized subassemblies; companies that want one proven size for several stations, to simplify training and parts management.

Probably not for: if the load plus gripper exceeds a few kilograms or the reach has to extend deep into pallets, choose its bigger brother, the FANUC CRX-10iA. Do not buy it counting on the speed of a classic industrial robot either: a cobot works more slowly because it is built to protect people “Cobot or Industrial Robot”. Anyone who mainly needs a price comparison should know that FANUC makes that hard.

Deployments

FANUC is present in the country through distributors, spawalnictwo.pl among them, but with no specific reference for this model. In the cobot category in Poland, the best-documented deployments are those of Universal Robots, so it is worth treating them as a reference point for similar tasks cobots. In your inquiry to an integrator, ask for references from the food industry if you are considering the food-grade variant.

The most frequent competitor is the UR5e, the same 5 kg class with a huge choice of accessories and integrators; its indicative price is around PLN 127,600 (≈ EUR 29,190) (an estimate, 'from USD 35,000' according to a market overview). Anyone who wants to stay at 5 kg with a different ecosystem can look at the Doosan A0509 from Korea's Doosan Doosan Robotics.

A third option is the Dobot Nova 5, a Chinese 5 kg cobot with a tool speed of 2 m/s; no public price. A fourth is the Techman TM5-700, a model with a 6 kg payload, if you need more headroom. How this looks in practice with UR: “Universal Robots UR5e, UR10e and UR20 Compared”.

The CRX-5iA belongs to the FANUC cobot family; the company was founded in 1972 in Oshino FANUC. The marketing slogan of the whole series is '8 Years Zero Maintenance', a claim that the mechanics need no scheduled maintenance for eight years. The 5 kg model is the second from the bottom of the range, just above the FANUC CRX-3iA. The specific debut date of the 5iA is not documented and there are no events attached to this model, so we do not build a timeline from them.