In 2025, Loop Technology, an industrial automation specialist with facilities in Dorset, Bristol and Sheffield, were awarded the FANUC Global Robot Partner of the Year Innovation award. FANUC are one of the world’s largest industrial robot manufacturers, and the prize recognised Loop Technology’s exceptional automation capability and its reputation for creative solutions to the hardest problems in advanced manufacturing.
The go-to team for “impossible” automation
For 28 years, Loop Technology have built a reputation as the UK’s go-to system integrator for the toughest automation challenges. When a manufacturer has been told a process can’t be automated, Loop Technology is often the next call they make. With the launch of Loop Technology US Inc. in Seattle, Washington, US manufacturers can now draw on that same expertise and heritage. The opening of this new industrial automation specialist across the Atlantic, will provide an exciting opportunity for US businesses who aren’t looking for commodity automation, to leverage robotic engineering capability that can help them evolve their current automation set up to solve a more complex problem.
Loop Technology’s robotics engineers have deep expertise in vision-guided robotics, motion control and bespoke automation software. They’ve delivered cells and systems across aerospace, defence, renewables, automotive, oil and gas, logistics, food and drink, and education.
Vision-guided robotics
Loop Technology’s vision work covers 3D path planning, localised correction and calibration, powering a wide range of applications from automated fastening to metrology and defect detection.
Motion control at the frontier: FibreLINE and FibreFORM
Loop Technology’s motion control expertise shows most clearly in FibreLINE, its system for high-rate composite manufacturing of aerostructures, wind turbine blades, drones and automotive panels.
At the heart of FibreLINE is FibreFORM, a pick-and-place system that uses high-flow vacuum grippers to lift large sheets of carbon fibre from the cutting table, form them into the three-dimensional shape of the tool surface, and place each ply into the mould to within ±2 mm. Its award-winning end effector combines integrated servo motor-drive units with a custom kinematic solver, so plies are formed while they’re being transferred.
The two FibreFORM systems at the University of Sheffield AMRC’s newly opened COMPASS facility are configured at five metres long to match the ply size there, but the design scales to plies over 30 metres. Between the FibreFORM’s at COMPASS, they synchronise 64 slices and 576 motors, demonstrating Loop Technology’s exceptional capabilities in the area of robotic motion control. The result is a faster, more accurate way to lay down large volumes of fibre, using far less factory floor space than automated fibre or tape placement (AFP/ATP) or manual layup.
Software that goes beyond robot and PLC
Many integrators stop at a standard robot and PLC. Loop Technology goes further, writing software that connects equipment with no common interface and runs tightly integrated multi-machine cells using offline programming tools. That ability is a big reason Loop Technology excels at R&D automation. One example of a highly innovative software solution is RealPATH, which generates robot paths automatically, for instance producing laser-cleaning programs without manual coding.
Robotic machining: machine-tool accuracy at a fraction of the cost
Loop Technology’s turnkey robotic machining cells deliver high accuracy and repeatability and offer a cost-effective alternative to large machine tools. They can trim and finish cured carbon fibre aerospace and automotive panels, timber beams and frames, plastics, engineering foam, sand-casting moulds, aluminium sheets and more. Options include Loop Technology’s proprietary iKCAM, which greatly improves precision for a fraction of the usual cost. The RoboMACH HA is another configuration that comes with a FANUC M-800iA/60 as standard.
See FibreFORM live in Coventry
Loop Technology will be showing FibreFORM at the FANUC Open House in Coventry on 3 and 4 November. Visit the stand to meet Global Head of Sales Matt Hardman and Technical Sales Engineer Adam White and find out how Loop Technology can speed up your advanced manufacturing.