Can I judge this spacer pilot without buying the FR5 first?

I'd still pay for a small fixture feasibility check if that is the big unknown. Counting the current job won't tell you whether the spacer can be presented reliably.

Loading isn't the whole delay. He spends more time finding the right tray than putting spacers into the fixture. I hadn't included that in my little saving calculation.

Then observe tray supply as well. Anika, a bounded feasibility check could help, but Hassan hasn't yet established which problem deserves that money.

I inherited a small loading trial where the robot waited for trays beautifully. The person who had previously carried them over was also doing inspection, and the proposal had quietly allocated that person elsewhere. We ended up changing the tray route before touching the robot work. Your colleague may be guarding more than his fixture-making time. Ask him what he stops doing when he feeds this pilot.

Asked him. Inspection, exactly. Thanks Luis. He'll walk one ordinary spacer order with me; I've agreed it happens in work time with cover, not as a favour after hours.

That changes my answer. Spend the first money on understanding that handoff, not on a nest for a job nobody can keep supplied.

And use the order you actually observe. Don't annualise the busiest ten minutes and call that the normal saving.

We've deferred the robot purchase. That order spent longer waiting for inspection than being loaded, and a labelled tray shelf removed one of the searches. There's still a job here, but not the arm-saving story I sold him.