FANUC's smallest collaborative arm is also its fastest and most precise

In a robot range, the small model is usually the compromise: less reach, less payload, and worse numbers everywhere else as well. FANUC's newest collaborative arm breaks that rule, and the break is visible only when its data sheet is read next to its nearest sibling's. The CRX-3iA went into mass production in January 2026 and reached the North American market on 20 April 2026. It lifts 3 kg over a 692 mm reach and weighs 11 kg. The next size up, the CRX-5iA, lifts 5 kg over 994 mm and weighs 25 kg. Read the rest of both cards and the ranking inverts. Repeatability is ±0.02 mm on the small arm against ±0.03 mm on the larger one. Speed goes the same way: 1,200 mm/s in collaborative mode and 2,500 mm/s in high-speed mode, against 1,000 and 2,000 mm/s. The smallest CRX is the tightest and the quickest in the family — it simply cannot carry much. The mass is the design decision the rest follows from. Eleven kilograms is light enough for one person to carry, so FANUC removed the anchor bolts: the robot stands on a magnetic base, mounts floor, wall, ceiling or at an angle, and detects its own installation angle rather than being configured for it. After a move, the operator touches a wall with the welding wire and the arm works out where it now stands, so the taught program survives the relocation — the step that usually makes moving a cobot expensive. The 3 kg is not an arbitrary floor either. It is enough to hold a welding torch and a seam sensor at once, which is what lets the robot locate the joint and generate its own path instead of replaying a fixed trajectory. FANUC names shipbuilding among the applications: structures too large to bring to a robot cell, where the machine has to come to the work. The arm is the first FANUC robot in this catalogue. FANUC does not publish a list price; the robot is quoted per configuration.