Wendelspanswick
Member
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....when you can buy a robot to do it for you!
http://pages.ebay.com/link/?nav=item.view&alt=web&id=161623756539
http://pages.ebay.com/link/?nav=item.view&alt=web&id=161623756539
- Thread starter Wendelspanswick
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pedrobedro
Man at Matalan
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- CX near Chesterfield
Can you buy another robot to grind all the rust off before that one patches your sill though ? 
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- Birmingham
Absolute bargain, I integrated a couple into a cell for a job in Saudi, seem to recall the weldsets were £10k+ on their own.
Because, for quite a surprisingly large amount of jobs, you would spend more time learning how to set it up and teach it where to spray the liquid metal than just picking up the torch and doing the job yourself!
CNC and robotics are neat, but theyre not the final word in efficiency. Unless your making zillions of similar things like mr robotstar5
CNC and robotics are neat, but theyre not the final word in efficiency. Unless your making zillions of similar things like mr robotstar5
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- Birmingham
Robots definitely have their place for repetitive jobs but not much use for a one-off
Wedg1e
They call me Mr. Bodge-angles
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Yep, we used one on an inspection system for a certain munitions maker, it replaced two manually-loaded machines and runs 24 hours a day with hardly any downtime - and that's just for wear on the probes that contact the ammo (artillery shells) looking for defects.
For the life of me I don't know how the thing is so repeatable and accurate year on year, surely some bearings or gears must wear out eventually?
They have to be checked at regular intervals against a certified standard like any inspection equipment and recalibrated if needed, but Id be fascinated to learn about the proceedure from someone actually involved in the process. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot_calibration
I have the same issue with my portable cmm arm (which is effectively a posable robot arm but with no motors), in that it occasionally has positioning errors due to some encoders not being correct to the calibration file, but to recalibrate it has to be posed in a variety of positions in a jig and encoder compensation values adjusted. It can still read to more accuracy than I really need for what Im using it for though. It used to be $2400 to have a recalibration done (for a hours work...), but now the manufacturer has abandoned the model as obsolete and Im struggling to find somewhere that can do it as the manufacturers have locked up the configs behind bespoke secret passwords that they will not provide.
I have the same issue with my portable cmm arm (which is effectively a posable robot arm but with no motors), in that it occasionally has positioning errors due to some encoders not being correct to the calibration file, but to recalibrate it has to be posed in a variety of positions in a jig and encoder compensation values adjusted. It can still read to more accuracy than I really need for what Im using it for though. It used to be $2400 to have a recalibration done (for a hours work...), but now the manufacturer has abandoned the model as obsolete and Im struggling to find somewhere that can do it as the manufacturers have locked up the configs behind bespoke secret passwords that they will not provide.
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Most modern robots can be calibrated using a datum point, the arm will approach it from a number of directions and can calculate the offsets required to maintain accuracy.
ABB bought out the "bullseye" system where the tip of the welding wire is passed through a beam a few times and can work out where the tip is relative to the base and from that the offsets required to maintain program accuracy. The woman who wrote the bullseye software came over from Sweden to explain the maths behind it, my brains started dribbling out of my ears after 2 minutes
