FANUC's green cobot line has quietly shrunk from five arms to two

FANUC's collaborative robots come in two colours. The white CRX arms are the ones the company advertises. The green CR arms came first, and there are now only two of them left on sale. A reading of the manufacturer's current cobot listing shows eight models: the CRX-3iA, CRX-5iA, CRX-10iA, CRX-10iA/L, CRX-20iA/L and CRX-30iA in white, and just the CR-15iA and CR-35iB in green. Missing are the CR-4iA, CR-7iA and CR-7iA/L that opened the line at IMTS in September 2016, and the CR-35iA that started it all in June 2015. None of the four has been declared discontinued. Their product pages are still published and still carry full specification tables — but where a current model offers a "Get a Quote" button, each of the four now offers "Get Support". That single word is the only public statement of their status, and it is the reason this catalogue has moved all four to retired without a withdrawal date: FANUC has published none. The replacement tells its own story. The CR-35iA of 2015 was the first force-limited arm to carry more than 10 kg, and it needed 990 kg of machine to lift 35 kg — twenty-eight kilograms of robot per kilogram of payload. The CR-35iB that replaced it in 2022 lifts 50 kg, since a 2023 uprating, using 375 kg of robot. Seven years bought a higher payload for 615 kg less mass, at the cost of 170 mm of reach. The trade the buyer accepted in 2015 — enormous mass for the right to work without a fence — is no longer the trade on offer. This catalogue keeps profiles for all six green arms, including the four no longer sold. A machine that defined a market segment does not stop being worth describing when its maker stops quoting a price for it.