The name says 35, the datasheet says 50: FANUC's strongest cobot outgrew its own model number

FANUC's CR-35iB is, by the manufacturer's own description, the industry's strongest collaborative robot: 50 kg of payload with no safety fence, over a 1,643 mm reach, from an arm weighing 375 kg. The figure that should give a specifier pause is the one in the name. The machine launched in May 2022 as a 35 kg cobot, a redesign of the 2015 CR-35iA that shed roughly 62 percent of its mass, 375 kg against 990 kg, to make the heavy cobot something a plant could install in an afternoon. On 1 June 2023, after showing the robot at Automate in Detroit, FANUC America announced a payload increase to 50 kg. The model number did not change. FANUC's own cobot microsite still describes the machine as having "a payload of 35kg or 50kg", while its specification table lists 50 kg flat. The same announcement did the opposite to a sister machine. The CRX-25iA, FANUC's largest white-series cobot, also gained payload - from 25 kg to 30 kg - and this one was renamed, becoming the CRX-30iA. FANUC's website now redirects the old name to the new page. Two upgrades announced on the same day, two different conventions: one arm kept a number that understates it by 15 kg, the other took a new one. For anyone reading a specification sheet this is a practical trap rather than a curiosity. A 2022 datasheet, a 2026 quotation and a third-party listing can all carry the designation CR-35iB and describe different lifting capacities, and none of them is wrong. FANUC publishes no list price for either machine, so the payload line in a written quotation is the only place the difference becomes visible. This catalogue records the manufacturer's current specification table - 50 kg - and notes the older 35 kg rating in the profile, because both appear to remain in the manufacturer's own materials. Two further discrepancies sit in the same file: FANUC America gives the reach as 1,643 mm while the 2022 European launch release quoted 1,831 mm, and the product page lists 300 mm/s in collaborative mode where the cobot microsite lists 750 mm/s.