What they saw at the McKees Rocks, Pa., metal service center was a lot of repetitive, tedious, and sometimes strenuous operator movement around the shear.

While robotics and metal fabrication have a long history together, integrating a robot into a front-loading guillotine shear is something new altogether.

This zone is traditionally called shear zone in view of fact that the material in the final form would be removed by shear from the parent metal.