FANUC had its beginnings as part of Fujitsu developing early numerical control (NC) and servo systems.

Service is an integral part of FANUC and the company famously supports products for as long as customers use them.

[8] In 1955, Fujitsu Ltd. approached Seiuemon Inaba (ja:稲葉清右衛門), who was then a young engineer, to lead a new subsidiary purposed to make the field of numerical control.

This nascent form of automation involved sending instructions encoded into punched cards or magnetic tape to motors that controlled the movement of tools, effectively creating programmable versions of the lathes, presses, and milling machines.

[10] The next phase of expansion would be computer numerical control, which relied on G-code, a standard programming language.

The new company was 50 percent owned by each partner and was based in Detroit, with GM providing most of the management and FANUC the products.

Use of industrial robots has allowed companies like Panasonic in Amagasaki to run factories which produce 2 million television sets a month (mostly high-end plasma LCD screens) with just 25 people.

Headquartered in Rochester Hills, Michigan, the company had 10 regional locations in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and Brazil.

The company provided these systems for applications including automotive and fabricated metals to medical devices and plastics.

This business unit was a wholly owned subsidiary of FANUC Ltd. of Japan and offered CNC systems, lasers, Manufacturing Intelligence software products, field repairs and advanced technical services, expanded training classes, a vast inventory of CNC replacement parts, PCB motor repair and return, field support, and CS-24 after hours support.

There is no specific syntax for distinguishing the model from the device type and series, with spaces or dashes or slashes, which can result in difficulty searching for information, parts, and service for this equipment.

For example, in the FANUC-0 series, these are all valid identifications for various types of NC controls and machines:[21] When separate computer aided manufacturing software is used to control these different systems, the model differences can be used to tell the manufacturing software how to more efficiently use the system programming capabilities.

Some specialty models have fewer or more axes or special characteristics that help them perform in certain environments (such as in clean rooms or in wet/dirty wash down areas).

The pressurized air is used to actuate grippers or power vacuum cups (through venturi generators) to grip and move parts.

To that end, all FANUC controllers contain the computers and connections required to use 2D/3D cameras, they can function as PLCs, and even operate as a web server to allow technicians to remotely access the robot from a browser.

During normal operation, the teach pendant is usually stowed out of the way so the robot can automatically run through programmed motion.

The teach pendant contains a touch screen display and keypad to view and edit program data, as well as a deadman switch that the operator must hold in order to enable the robot to move.

FANUC produces a range of industrial robots with the required safety sensors and software to enable power and force limited collaborative operation.

This allows the robots to safely work alongside humans in a collaborative fashion without endangering workers.

Since boxes are picked, placed, and only rotated along the floor plane, a full 6 axes of articulation in the arm is unnecessary.

The 3 arms connect underneath the robot and support the faceplate, similar to an inverted camera tripod.

Because of the lower mass and fewer moving parts, delta style robots tend to be very fast with the downside being reduced payload and reach.

This is a unique series of robots designed to be mounted to a rail that runs over CNC machines for rapid servicing.

This group of products encompasses 2D and 3D imaging sensors (cameras) and software that allows programmers to incorporate vision into robot tasks.

This allows parts to be fed into a work cell flexible (such as on a conveyor or a pallet) and removes the need for precise fixturing.