Epson VT6L

The VT6L is the arm Epson built to lose an argument on paper and win it on price. Announced at Automate on 8 April 2019 and on sale from that June at 13,900 dollars, it was pitched as an entry point to six-axis automation for shops that had been priced out of it - a rare case of an industrial robot maker publishing a list price at all. The defining choice is the all-in-one design: the controller sits inside the robot base instead of in a separate cabinet, so a cell needs floor space for the arm and nothing else. Power is 100-240 V single phase at 1.2 kVA, and a 48 V DC version added in 2022 lets the arm run off a machine's own supply. The arm reaches 920 mm to the fifth-axis centre and 1000 mm to the flange, carries 3 kg rated and 6 kg maximum, weighs 40 kg without cables and completes a standard cycle in 0.60 seconds. It mounts on a table, ceiling or wall, and is offered in ISO Class 4 cleanroom and IP67 protected versions. The price is paid in precision. Repeatability is +/-0.1 mm on every axis, five times looser than the +/-0.02 mm of the C8, which rules the VT6L out of fine assembly and puts it squarely where Epson aims it: machine tool and injection moulding load and unload, pick and place, dispensing and simple assembly. The joint envelope is also tighter than the C series, with the first axis limited to +/-170 degrees rather than +/-240. Even so the industry took the machine seriously - it won Control Engineering's Engineers' Choice award in robotics in 2020 and Product of the Year at the Assembly Show. Programming is in Epson RC+, later joined by the simplified RC+ Express.

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