ABB Robotics has come up with a standardized package of motor and gear units which facilitate the creation of custom external axis systems. These gear and motor units are already part of the robots and positioners from ABB.
Motor and gear unit packages
Now they are being introduced as complete packages with cables, serial measurement board boxes, safety and optimization software. With these packages the designing and building of additional robot axes such as the robot carriers, servo guns, workpiece positioners and track motions becomes easy. The vice president of ABB, Joe Campbell, explained that the packages are pre-engineered and delivered with previously defined CAD models and configuration files, which makes it easy for integrators to build external axis systems.
The motor units are available in four different sizes, which include an extra-large motor (MU400) suitable for high-power applications for e.g. turntables. Coming to the gear units, ABB is offering seven versions that are presently built into ABB’s good-quality positioners, such as the MID( for interchanging) units and the MTD (for positioning). Flexible cables are part of the packages which make integration easy and increase the life of the system to a large extent. Push buttons for brake release, serial measurement boards and axis selectors for enhancing safety and control are also offered as part of the package. ABB is launching the TuneMaster, a new RobotWare software tool, which takes care of tuning motor and gear unit parameters for improved motion performance in lesser time. ABB has introduced the ABB Remote Service as an add-on option for monitoring error messages transmitted from the gear units and the motor in order to ensure maximum uptime of the ABB Robots and to provide instantaneous resolution for any unplanned break-downs.