William, thanks for giving us a description of that incident: very scary, indeed. I can see why there's so much concern about careful industrial robotics programming.
The reason thatbthings seem to be different in production is that the robots move much faster than during any of the setup modes, and also that (it seems), the production staff tend to run robots toward their maximum capabilities. The very exciting experience that I had was a robot that I had done the path programming for flinging a six-pound transmission part across the work area. Fortunately we were not yet in a production mode, and the part harmlessly hit the floor twenty feet away. But it certainly could have ruined sombody's day. That incident was the result of the production motion speed being set much faster than it needed to be, and the gripper air pressure being lower than it should have been set at.
Interesting, William. Why would the robot's performance be different in production? Does it have to do with the weight or resistance the robot encounters in production?
In theory at least it should not be that very difficult to link the two robots into one robotic program. Putting two 5-axis robots on a common base is an interesting concept, and it does reduce the concerns that would exist using two six-axis robots side by side. One thing that ceratinly will require a bit of extra attention is the much greater inertia encountered when swinging the common axis. Inertia is one of those things that tends to "get in the way" when programming robotic motions. Things that work perfectly at setup speeds suddenly have problems when running at production speeds. This is most obvious when grippers are unable to hold the part securly during high speed changes in direction. The result can be a part weighing several pounds being thrown quite a few feet.
Hi Rob, I agree. The movement of the 2 robotic arms are very impressive. I thought the Dremel added a nice touch to the versatility of tools that can be attached to it. I wonder what robotic system is more cost competitive, ReThink Robotics "Baxter" or the ST Robotics Tandem Robot System? Very cool video!!
That's a pretty cool video. It really shows the value of the robot. It's nice to see prices coming down on this type of equipment -- a boon for small manufacturers.
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