KUKA LBR iisy 6 R1300

What it's for

The KUKA LBR iisy 6 R1300 is a cobot from the iisy family by KUKA. The data point to two main tasks: standard assembly and machine tending, that is, loading and unloading a machining cell, press or injection-molding machine.

What sets this variant apart is its reach. The arm reaches 1300 mm with a 6 kg payload, so it gets deep into a machine or to a pallet placed further from the base, where a small desktop cobot from the cobots category simply runs out. Six degrees of freedom (“Degrees of Freedom (DOF) in Humanoid Robots”) and torque sensors in every axis let it detect contact with a person right in the joint. This is the safety mechanism we describe in “What Is a Cobot and How Does It Differ from an Industrial Robot” and “Robot Safety Standards”.

On a production floor (factories) the robot will find work on repetitive, light tasks next to an operator. It is not a machine for heavy parts: 6 kg is the payload including the gripper, and the gripper has to be chosen separately, for instance from the ranges of OnRobot or Robotiq. You also don't buy it for raw speed: the manufacturer is betting here on predictability and collaboration, not record cycle times.

Who it's for

Best suited to: integrators and plants looking for a mature design from a global brand, with local support; the robot has been on sale since 2019, so it is no experiment. It will do well where standard assembly needs a longer reach and you still want to work without fencing. It suits companies that already have a person at the station and want to relieve them rather than replace them.

A poor fit: if the lowest entry price is what counts, there are cheaper routes. We also don't recommend it for parts heavier than a few kilograms including gripper, or for fast pick-and-place at scale. Companies with no automation experience should expect that the robot itself is only the start of the spending: a gripper, fixtures, safeguarding and programming will follow.

Before you decide, read “How to Buy a Cobot Step by Step” and [[wiedza:cobot-czy-robot-przemysłowy]].

Deployments

We know only the distributor, zapamet.pl, and the declared applications: standard assembly and machine tending.

If you are considering a purchase, ask the distributor for references and a visit to a working cell. We describe the context of the cobot market in Poland in “Doosan Robotics: Cobots from the Korean Maker in Poland”, and an overview of Polish robotics companies in “Polish Robotics Companies”.

The closest rival on the market is the UR5e from Universal Robots: 5 kg payload, 850 mm reach, about PLN 127,611 (≈ EUR 29,210) in our comparison, available in Poland through Elmark. Shorter reach, but a big accessory ecosystem; a series comparison is in “Universal Robots UR5e, UR10e and UR20 Compared”.

If a 1300 mm reach is critical and 6 kg is too little, consider the KUKA LBR iisy 11 R1300: the same reach, an 11 kg payload and a cleanroom variant, also through zapamet.pl.

The FANUC CRX-5iA is a cobot with a 5 kg payload and a food-grade option; price not disclosed. More on the family in “FANUC CRX: The Cobot Series with 8 Years of Zero Maintenance”. Choose the ABB GoFa CRB 15000 (5 kg, about PLN 148,000 (≈ EUR 33,880) at a distributor) when the ABB brand matters to you. And the Doosan A0509 (5 kg, 900 mm, ±0.03 mm) can be bought through coboty-doosan.pl; we cover it in “Doosan Robotics: Cobots from the Korean Maker in Poland”.

The LBR iisy family is KUKA's answer to the need for a simpler cobot that is cheaper to deploy. The predecessor in its range is the KUKA LBR iiwa 7 R800, a seven-axis pioneer from 2013/2014. The iisy series went on sale in 2019 together with the smallest variant, the KUKA LBR iisy 3 R760, and the iisy 6 R1300 dates from the same year. The family later grew with further variants: the iisy 8 R930, the KUKA LBR iisy 11 R1300 (2022) and the iisy 15 R930.

We have not recorded any separate events for this model. From the manufacturer's calendar we do know of June 2023, when KUKA introduced the autonomous mobile platform KUKA KMP 1500P, a good example that the brand is developing cobots and a mobile base in parallel.