Robotic Linear Rail Build Photos

Hi Guys,

I built this track last year but I thought I would put some photos up on here for anyone that might be interested to look at,

The track is 6000mm long and weights 1700kg.

The linear rails are HGR35, the motor is a Hiwin 1kw with a Apex Dynamics planetary gearbox with a 16:1 ratio and Apex Dynamics Mod 2 rack.

The track has not been set up for production yet as I have been busy playing with my plasma cutter.

All of the plate parts were cut on my CNC plasma using a Hypertherm 125amp power source.

Next I am going to convert my old Motoman K6SB to use LinuxCNC and it will be mounted on top of this rail replacing the proprietary Motoman robot that is on it in the pictures. Then I will build a rotatory that will rotate the work piece for the robot to weld.

The reason I cannot use the Motoman robot in the pictures is because it did not come from factory with external axis controls, they were extras. To buy a external axis kit for the robot would cost $12,000AUD for one axis.

I was planing on using a PLC and Modbus control of the servo to control this robot on the track but since I have learnt a lot about LinuxCNC, I will covert my old robot to use it giving me up to 9 axises to control and I will use Ethercat communication.

Cool....

Impressive...

Inspiring...

That is some fine work.


But why put the control cabinet on the track?.

Roiki wrote:

But why put the control cabinet on the track?.

The plan is to build two more 6m tracks and extend its range out to 18m.

Running long control cables from the cabinet to the robot gets very expensive and I would think signal quality would degrade over such a long length. Running long power cables is no big deal.

How are you linking the tracks? are the linear rails 6m each or how are you aligning and joining them? And what a re you welding with 18m of track?

And yes running that much cable for each motor and encoder tends to cost a lot. Though signaling isn't an issue when handled right.