Importance of Industrial Robot Periodic and Preventive Maintenance

ARTI­CLE WRIT­TEN BY: BOB­BY COLE | July 22, 2019

Hav­ing a sys­tem break­down is a night­mare for any busi­ness. To ensure small dam­ages are caught before a cost­ly break­down occurs, main­te­nance is vital. In the world of ser­vice and repair, many kinds of main­te­nance exist. The experts at Robots​.com rec­om­mend Peri­od­ic and Pre­ven­ta­tive main­te­nance to max­i­mize the per­for­mance of any robot­ic system. 

Peri­od­ic Maintenance

The most basic form of main­te­nance, peri­od­ic main­te­nance, is a sched­uled point in time that is sug­gest­ed by the man­u­fac­tur­er in order to inspect and upkeep key com­po­nents of your sys­tem. This type of main­te­nance is very sim­ple and is used to insure the prop­er func­tion of a robot on a day to day basis. This includes small tasks such as inspect­ing wire har­ness­es, tight­en­ing screws, lubri­cat­ing joints and per­form­ing a full-back­up on the work cell. Minor tasks like this will help pre­vent major issues from aris­ing in the future.

Pre­ven­tive Maintenance

Pre­ven­tive main­te­nance is a cal­cu­lat­ed sched­ule based on time, pro­duc­tion, and the envi­ron­ment the robot oper­ates in. The life cycle of a robot will be dif­fer­ent depend­ing on all of these vari­ables. Pre­ven­ta­tive main­te­nance will take all of this into con­sid­er­a­tion and cre­ate a main­te­nance sched­ule that will extend the sys­tems life to the fullest. 

Good Prac­tices For Maintenance

Main­te­nance is only ben­e­fi­cial if the per­son doing the inspec­tion is trained and pre­pared. When thou­sands or even mil­lions of dol­lars are on the line, a fool-proof main­te­nance rou­tine is important. 

Here are some good prac­tices that our experts sug­gest you take into con­sid­er­a­tion:

• It’s impor­tant to keep spare parts on hand for a quick replace­ment. Oth­er­wise, you could be wait­ing days before you’re able to replace a part. 
• Peri­od­ic main­te­nance is most com­mon­ly per­formed by trained oper­a­tors who work with the sys­tem on a dai­ly basis. This type of robot­ic main­te­nance usu­al­ly only takes 5 to 10 min­utes at the begin­ning or the end of a shift depend­ing on how big the sys­tem is.
• The per­fect time for pre­ven­ta­tive main­te­nance is dur­ing sched­uled hol­i­day shut­downs. This avoids cut­ting into pro­duc­tion time and min­i­mizes the chances of a break down dur­ing pro­duc­tion hours.
• Major pre­ven­ta­tive main­te­nance repairs, like a grease/​oil change or com­po­nent replace­ment, should be done by a pro­fes­sion­al. The dam­ages caused by these tasks not being done cor­rect­ly can cause a huge finan­cial blow to production.
• The major item to focus on when per­form­ing pre­ven­tive main­te­nance is the system’s grease. The grease in a sys­tem pro­tects all the mov­ing parts from fric­tion and wear. Over time the grease starts to lose its vis­cos­i­ty due to heat and fric­tion and needs to be replaced.
  
• Grease and oil have a shelf life that’s pro­vid­ed by the man­u­fac­tur­er. Once grease or oil gets close to the end of its shelf life, the min­er­als start to break down and will cause the sys­tems bush­ings and reduc­ers start to wear down. Robots​.com has its own grease that is supe­ri­or to the grease pro­vid­ed by the orig­i­nal man­u­fac­tur­er. Our Tri­bol­ube VG‑1 is a lithi­um-soap-thick­ened syn­thet­ic grease with excel­lent extreme pres­sure, anti-wear, anti-rust, and oxi­da­tion resis­tance prop­er­ties. Find out more details about this grease here.
• It’s impor­tant to have the des­ig­nat­ed main­te­nance per­son­nel trained on pre­ven­tive main­te­nance to decrease the odds of sys­tem failure.
• When doing pre­ven­tive main­te­nance, it’s very impor­tant to fol­low the man­u­fac­tur­er’s specs, instruc­tions, and timetable. The biggest cause of sys­tem fail­ure is when a man­u­fac­tur­er’s guide isn’t followed.

Con­clu­sion

Stay­ing on the Peri­od­ic or Pre­ven­tive main­te­nance sched­ule will ben­e­fit the life of your sys­tem. It allows you to min­i­mize down­time and make adjust­ments or repairs with­out los­ing pro­duc­tion time. It is always best to have some­one trained to do your pre­ven­tive main­te­nance so that it is per­formed to the stan­dards of the manufacturer. 

Robots​.com offers pre­ven­ta­tive main­te­nance ser­vices to make sure your recon­di­tion­ing and repairs are all done cor­rect­ly. To request more infor­ma­tion on robot­ic main­te­nance, call us at 877−762−6881, or fill out our main­te­nance form.