How To Specify the Right Industrial Robot

When think­ing about automat­ing any indus­tri­al appli­ca­tion, spec­i­fy­ing an indus­tri­al robot arm that can ful­fill the goals of the appli­ca­tion is an impor­tant begin­ning step. In order to select an indus­tri­al robot arm that will be a good match for the com­pa­ny, the indus­tri­al appli­ca­tion and oth­er fac­tors should be considered.

Dif­fer­ent robot arms are designed to per­form spe­cif­ic appli­ca­tions. For exam­ple, if an arc weld­ing task is being auto­mat­ed, the user would not want to inte­grate a Fanuc R‑2000iA. The R‑2000iA is designed to auto­mate mate­r­i­al han­dling tasks. A bet­ter robot arm choice would be either a Fanuc ARC Mate robot arm or a Motoman VA1400 arm. Spec­i­fy­ing a robot arm that will serve the appli­ca­tion best will help ensure prod­uct qual­i­ty and oper­a­tion efficiency.

The required pay­load capac­i­ty also needs to be con­sid­ered. Many arc weld­ing appli­ca­tions only require enough strength to han­dle a weld­ing torch. Oth­er appli­ca­tions, such as mate­r­i­al han­dling and spot weld­ing, require more robust robot arms that can han­dle high­er pay­loads, some­times upwards of 200 kilo­grams or more.

Along the same lines, the work area of the robot arm or work­cell needs to be estab­lished. Ver­ti­cal and hor­i­zon­tal reach­es vary across robot mod­els. Fanuc Robot­ics and Motoman Robot­ics both design and man­u­fac­ture long-reach ver­sion of many of their pop­u­lar robot arms, includ­ing Fanuc’s ARC Mate 100iC/​6L and Motoman’s UP20‑6 robot arm. Var­i­ous mount­ing styles can fur­ther increase a robot arm’s reach

Oth­er phys­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics, such as the factory’s floor plan, should be con­sid­ered when search­ing for the per­fect indus­tri­al robot arm. The size and dimen­sions of the robot arm need­ed will often be deter­mined by the area in which it is work­ing. If the robot arm needs to work in small, con­fined area, a table­top sized robot, such as Motoman’s HP3 robot arm, might be more appro­pri­ate than a larg­er stan­dard sized robot.

Every­day, Robots​.com helps man­u­fac­tur­ers spec­i­fy a robot arm that would auto­mate their appli­ca­tion. Our experts help cus­tomers spec­i­fy robot arms that would work for their appli­ca­tion by dis­cussing their indus­tri­al process, eval­u­at­ing their needs, and work­ing with appli­ca­tion engi­neers to devel­op a robot­ic sys­tem to increase pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and effi­cien­cy. To speak with the experts at Robots​.com, sub­mit your infor­ma­tion on our con­tact page or call 877−762−6881.