Leading the Segment | With a daily production capacity of 600,000 swabs per machine, STEP Zhongweixing’s SCARA robots are lending their support to the fight against the pandemic.
2022-05-10
Recently, the high-quality robotics brand STEP announced that its Zhongweixing SCARA robots—after undergoing rigorous testing and verification—have been recognized by a leading medical device company for their exceptional efficiency: each robot can produce up to 600,000 nasal and pharyngeal swabs per day. These robots are now being deployed in an intelligent production line for packaging nasal and pharyngeal swabs.
During the pandemic, people have become increasingly familiar with that cotton-swab-like device. It’s about 15 cm long and has a tufted tip. The product label refers to it as a “single-use sampler,” which is used after being gently swirled in the nasal cavity or throat. Some of these samplers are placed into sampling tubes and sent to nucleic acid testing labs, while others are put into antigen test kits for antigen detection. Medical professionals call it a “nasal/pharyngeal swab.”
The original manual swab production line typically relies on manual labor for cutting and loading/unloading operations. Workers remove entire swabs from the equipment, trim off excess material from the swab edges, and then place them back onto the packaging line—this process requires the involvement of 6 to 7 workers. As a result, not only is the labor demand high, but workers are also required to perform the same repetitive tasks for extended periods, leading to low efficiency, unstable product quality, and difficulty in meeting the demands of large-scale, high-quality production. At the same time, companies face challenges such as high labor costs and significant employee turnover, making the upgrade to automated production lines an urgent need for manufacturing enterprises.
Currently, China consumes hundreds of millions of nucleic acid swabs every day, placing extremely high demands on the efficiency of manufacturing nasal and pharyngeal swabs. At the same time, driven by multiple factors—including hygiene and safety concerns as well as difficulties in recruiting workers—manufacturing companies are actively promoting the use of robots to replace human labor.
· High repeat positioning accuracy
· High load, low noise
· Lightweight and highly rigid
· Fast running speed
The STEP Zhongweixing SCARA robot, equipped with advanced robotics dynamics algorithms, significantly boosts the robot’s operating speed. It is used in intelligent production lines for nasal and pharyngeal swab packaging. The robot picks up swabs and places them onto the packaging line, producing 24 swabs every 3 seconds. A single machine can manufacture 600,000 swabs per day. Just 20 STEP Zhongweixing SCARA robots are sufficient to meet the daily demand of a large city with a population of 10 million, thereby efficiently supporting epidemic prevention and control efforts.
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