Yaskawa Motoman HC20DTP

What it's for

The Yaskawa Motoman HC20DTP is a six-axis cobot with a 20 kg payload, in an IP67 design, approved for contact with food-grade grease, designed for the end of packing lines in the food industry, where the station has to be washed with a water jet. The most commonly cited application is precise palletizing in the food and pharmaceutical industries. There it is not only weight that counts but also hygiene and placement repeatability, and the manufacturer claims ±0.05 mm. The same design will work for loading crates and trays in meat and dairy plants and for stacking outer packs in pharmaceutical companies, where surfaces must be thoroughly disinfectable. In general manufacturing (factories) the HC20DTP can tend machines, that is, lift heavy parts off a press or lathe, but there its hygiene advantage is no longer needed, so it makes more sense to consider the cheaper variant without IP67, such as the Yaskawa Motoman HC20DT. The robot is programmed by Direct Teach: the operator guides the arm by hand and records points, with no code writing. Six integrated torque sensors detect contact with a person. Before the station can run without a cage, though, the risk assessment of the entire application, including gripper and product, must be completed (see “Robot Safety Standards”). You also need a gripper, for example from OnRobot or Robotiq, and safety sensors, for example SICK scanners. The reach of up to 1700 mm lets it serve a standard-size pallet without adding a linear axis, although the manufacturer does not state payload at full reach, so each case has to be calculated with an integrator.

Who it's for

Best suited to: food and pharmaceutical plants that palletize packaging up to 20 kg including the gripper, have a station subject to washdown, and want to put a robot next to people. It also makes sense when ±0.05 mm repeatability is a requirement, not a luxury. Who it is not for: companies that need neither IP67 nor such high accuracy. There it is better to ask about the cheaper Yaskawa Motoman HC20DT or the lighter Yaskawa Motoman HC10. Nor is it a good choice for small workshops looking for an off-the-shelf robot for a few tens of thousands of zloty: 140 kg of mass demands a solid pedestal or cart, and deployment is usually done by an integrator. If you do not know where to start, read “How to Buy a Cobot Step by Step”.

Deployments

What is known is that all four HC models are sold in Poland directly by Yaskawa Polska of Wrocław, with no intermediaries, so that is where to ask, or at local integrators. We also found no described references from food plants, so we do not attribute any specific installations to the robot. From the general picture of the category, cobots of this class go mainly into palletizing and machine tending (see cobots and “What Is a Cobot and How Does It Differ from an Industrial Robot”). If you are looking for reference points, ask the supplier for a reference list from the food industry, ideally with a user contact.

The closest rivals have a similar payload but a different philosophy. The UR20 from Universal Robots (20 kg, 1750 mm reach, 64 kg weight) is more than twice as light, so it is easier to move between stations, and it has the largest accessory ecosystem, but we have no confirmed IP67 version for it, so for washdown use you need to check the manufacturer's data sheet (Universal Robots, comparison in “Universal Robots UR5e, UR10e and UR20 Compared”). The FANUC CRX-20iA/L (20 kg, 1418 mm reach) has a shorter reach, but it is usually chosen where a plant already runs on FANUC controllers. You will find a description of the series in “FANUC CRX: The Cobot Series with 8 Years of Zero Maintenance”. The Doosan H2017 (20 kg, 1700 mm reach) is a proposition for machining and palletizing with local support in Poland. The Techman TM20 (20 kg, 33 kg weight) stands out with a built-in camera, which makes tasks involving position recognition easier. None of them offers such a high claimed repeatability and a hygienic design at once, so when comparing always check the same parameters in the catalog data sheets (“How to Read a Robot Datasheet”).

Yaskawa Electric has operated since 1915, and the Motoman HC (Human Collaborative) cobot series came to market gradually. The Yaskawa Motoman HC10 went on sale in 2016, and the Yaskawa Motoman HC20DT with a 20 kg payload in 2019. The HC20DTP is a refined variant of it: the manufacturer states ±0.05 mm repeatability, three times better than the ±0.15 mm of the base HC20DT, with the same payload, number of axes and reach. We do not know the exact launch date of the HC20DTP, since the sources do not give it. Yaskawa published the current data sheet (DS-964-F) in December 2024. More about the company in the profile of Yaskawa Electric.