Can a cobot work without a safety fence?

Sometimes — but the fence decision comes from the risk assessment of the complete application, not from the robot's category. A cobot carrying a sharp, heavy or hot workpiece can still need guarding or reduced speed, and an industrial arm can sometimes work unfenced with scanners and safety-rated controls. The robot being a cobot is the start of the safety conversation, not the end of it.

Are cobots always cheaper than industrial robots?

The arm itself often costs less, and integration is usually lighter because programming is simpler and guarding may be reduced. But the comparison that matters is total project cost per part produced: a cobot that cannot hold the required cycle time is expensive at any price, and an industrial arm's higher installation cost is spread over much higher throughput.

What payloads and speeds can cobots handle?

Most cobot models are built for light-to-medium payloads and moderate speeds, because their safety concept depends on limiting force and momentum. High-payload cobots exist and the range keeps expanding, but when an application needs heavy payloads at high speed, physics pushes the design back toward a traditional arm behind guarding.

Which is easier to redeploy to a new task?

Cobots, by design: hand-guided teaching, lighter mounting and simpler safety validation make moving one to a new station a smaller project. Industrial arms can be reprogrammed too, but their guarding, foundations and safety circuits make redeployment a formal engineering job. For high-mix, changing work, that difference is often decisive.

ABB IRB 1200 Next Generation

The ABB logo, via the GlobleMatch directory.

5 kg / 900 mm variant9 kg / 700 mm variantVariants kept separate

Specs verified Listed 12 November 2026

Why it matters

Family pages that advertise 'up to' numbers invite a classic catalog error: pairing the best payload of one variant with the best reach of another. The IRB 1200 Next Generation is a strong product that does not need that trick — this listing keeps each configuration's figures together, exactly as ABB publishes them.

The IRB 1200 Next Generation is ABB's current family of small articulated industrial robots for material handling, assembly and machine tending. ABB publishes it as a set of configurations; the payload and reach belong to each variant, not to the family as a whole.

Key facts

Category	Small articulated industrial robot
Maker	ABB
Variants include	5 kg payload / 900 mm reach; 9 kg payload / 700 mm reach (among others)
Listing rule	Variant figures are shown paired, exactly as published; GlobleMatch never splices one variant's payload with another's reach
Official source	abb.com — IRB 1200 Next Generation
Facts verified	11 November 2026

ABB Robotics
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Listing basis: manufacturer-published information, checked against the source shown above. Where a figure could not be substantiated it is left out rather than estimated. Companies can claim their directory profile and submit new products free of charge.