Fairino vs Duco vs Dobot for CNC Machine Tending

Shop owners ask which cobot to buy before they have weighed the part or watched the door. Fairino, Duco, and Dobot all build collaborative arms that can tend a machine. ArmMate integrates Fairino, Duco, and Dobot cobots. The figures below come from their public pages. This page does not rank a winner. It shows a few numbers each maker publishes, and then the questions a spec sheet cannot answer.

Confirm every figure on the linked page before you use it. Makers revise tables. A catalog number is not a statement about your chuck height, your gripper, or your aisle.

Start with the part and the machine

Payload and reach are filters, not a selection. Add the gripper, the fingers, and anything else on the wrist to the weight of the heaviest part. Compare that sum with the published payload. If the sum sits close to the headline number, you are not done. Payload usually falls as the arm stretches, and the summary line on a product page does not tell you the reach at which a "max" still applies.

Reach has to clear the door and still meet the chuck or the vise with the gripper on. A longer arm is not automatically the right arm. It may not fit the aisle, and a shorter arm with a better mount may be the one that can actually load the machine. That layout work is what a CNC assessment is for. The small-shop tending note covers which jobs are worth measuring in the first place.

Published figures for a 5 kg class and a 10 kg class

The table uses one smaller model and one larger model from each maker, in the class shops usually ask about for chuck and vise work. These are not the only models each company sells. They are the pages we could quote without inventing a number. Scroll sideways on a phone. The words in each cell follow the label on that maker's page, because "reach" and "working radius" are not interchangeable just because they are both in millimeters.

How to read the table without over-reading it

A max payload is not a part weight

Fairino lists a headline payload and a higher max. The product page does not, in that summary line, say the reach at which the max still holds. Treat the higher number as a flag to open the maker's load data, not as the weight of a finished part you can wave at full extension. Duco and Dobot publish a single maximum payload on the pages above. Same rule: the gripper counts, and the pose counts.

Repeatability is not the same sentence on every page

Fairino names ISO 9283 pose repeatability. Duco and Dobot publish a repeatability figure without that same label on the pages quoted here. Do not line the millimeters up and declare one arm "more accurate" for your bore. Chuck a part, close the door, and see whether the process holds. A tending cell fails more often on grip, seating, and chips than on the last hundredth of a millimeter in a lab sentence.

Working radius is not a promise you can stand the robot in the aisle

Dobot's CRA table gives a working radius. Fairino and Duco give a reach. None of those distances include your door swing, your control pendant, or the cart that lives beside the machine on Tuesdays. Measure the real gap. Then see whether a pedestal, a different mount angle, or a different model is the one that fits. What a cell actually needs walks through mount, presentation, and the handshake with the CNC.

What a spec sheet does not decide

Three things matter as much as the millimeters, and none of them are a row in the table.

• The end of arm. A parallel gripper, a custom finger, or a dual gripper changes both payload and the path into the chuck. The arm page does not design that tool.
• The signal from the machine. Cycle complete, door, chuck clamp, and cycle start have to be real signals, not a person pressing a button the arm cannot see. That integration is scoped on the machine you have.
• Who supports it in Orange County after go-live. A published repeatability figure does not put a technician on Sand Canyon. ArmMate's support is the plan attached to the cell we install, after a site acceptance test.

Safety is the same story. A collaborative arm is not a permit to skip a risk assessment. On an ArmMate CNC cell that work follows ANSI/RIA R15.06 and ISO 10218, with collaborative-operation checks per ISO/TS 15066 where they apply, plus documented e-stop and lockout steps. Those are cell requirements, not a feature badge on a product tile.

Price, without inventing one

This article does not publish street prices for Fairino, Duco, or Dobot arms. A discounted arm with the wrong reach is the expensive one.

ArmMate does not publish a CNC cell price either. The cell is quoted after a free site assessment. The only published ArmMate system price is for frying cobot systems, from $19,000 plus installation. That number is not a stand-in for a mill or a lathe. You buy and own the robot on the work we do.

A practical way to choose

1. Weigh the part and the gripper you expect to use.
2. Measure from a possible mount to the chuck or the vise, with the door open.
3. Throw out any model whose published payload or reach cannot cover that sum and that distance. Use the links above, not a screenshot from a forum.
4. Bring the survivors to the assessment. We will say which class fits, and when none of them should.

Email hello@armmate.com, call (949) 333-3800, or use the CNC assessment form. ArmMate is at 15642 Sand Canyon, Irvine, CA 92618.

Sources

1. Fairino FR5: https://www.fairino.com/FR/4.html
2. Fairino FR10: https://www.fairino.com/FR/3.html
3. Duco GCR5-910: https://www.ducorobots.com/Gcr-series-cobot/gcr5-910
4. Duco GCR10-1300: https://www.ducorobots.com/Gcr-series-cobot/gcr10-1300
5. Dobot CRA series table on the CR5 product page: https://www.dobot-robots.com/products/cr-series/cr5.html

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• CNC shop automation
• Machine tending for small CNC shops
• What a CNC cobot cell needs
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