Ceiling-suspended moving-type robot
TAKUBO ANALECTS
Roughly speaking, there are two kinds of coating robot, one is Balance-arm type (Multi-joint type robot arm to be placed on the floor) and the other is Ceiling-suspended moving-type.
However, no one is originally designed for coating operation only. The Balance-arm type robot was developed for welding in the beginning. In the process of manufacturing, coating operation required some change from hand-spray (spraying by worker) to automatic machine or adoption of robot as well as other operation process did. And then a spray gun was put at the top of the Balance-arm type robot, and finally it became a coating robot in the history.
Watching this process, Takubo had been thinking “there must be more appropriate robot for coating”. And at last we found a robot with the artificial muscle, Rubbertuators, which was a prototype of the Ceiling-suspended moving-type robot in the first stage. It was a really ceiling-suspended moving type robot because it looked like a long-armed ape hanging down and moving from side to side.
The main body of the robot is suspended from the overrunning axis to coat with spray gun, and it is never laid on the floor.
Tasks for a coating robot to manage are:-
◎To flexibly manage every size of work, from small through big or long one
◎To have capability of mass-production
◎To be compact
◎To be easy to use, etc
The Ceiling-suspended moving type robot is able to manage all of the above tasks. This is SOFTBOY.
