A Dozen Robot Dos And Don'ts

摘要

At first glance, industrial robot specification sheets look fairly straightforward. Typically, there's a picture of the particular model, looking sleek and stylish, unblemished by external cabling, end-of-arm tooling, feed mechanisms and safety guards.rnThen there are the quoted figures: number of axes, maximum payload, reach, repeatability, maximum speed, cycle time and installationrnfootprint. All these specifications seem comparable, manufacturer to manufacturer, so it's like buying a car or a TV, surely.rnActually, it's not. During my many years designing and commissioning robot workcells, I've encountered many mistakes and oversights when specifying a robot for a particular task. Some I made myself, in the early days when robotics was still an unfamiliar technology, most I had to fix for frustrated robot buyers, whose machines wouldn't do what they were supposed to do.