This section provides an overview for robo cylinder as well as their applications and principles. Also, please take a look at the list of 10 robo cylinder manufacturers and their company rankings.
Table of Contents
Robo cylinder means an electrically powered cylinder. Usually, the cylinder is powered by compressor air sent from one or both sides of the cylinder to drive it. robo cylinders, on the other hand, are powered by electricity.
Even though it is electrically powered, it moves only in the front-back direction and operates on a single axis. Generally, air cylinders can only position two or at most three points, while robo cylinders can position freely within their stroke range.
The first advantage of robo cylinder compared to air cylinders is energy saving. Air power is generally less energy efficient due to piping resistance caused by long supply distances. robo cylinder are known to consume about one-tenth of the power consumed by air cylinders.
Other advantages include less shock when stopping, smaller tact time, easier design and manufacturing, and the ability to handle a wide variety of products. Because of this high level of convenience, the robot cylinder is used for transferring products between processing equipment.
The robo cylinders are mainly composed of a ball screw, a linear guide, and an AC servomotor.
The ball screw is used to convert the rotational motion of the servomotor into linear motion. It is characterized by its ability to transmit power with high precision and good positioning accuracy.
Linear guides are used to support the linear motion of ball screws. Ball screws only perform linear motion and are not very tolerant of other directions. Therefore, linear guides are used in a supplementary role to facilitate the application of force to linear motion.
AC servomotors are used to power the robo cylinder. The speed of the motor can be controlled freely by controlling the number of rotations using an encoder. The ability to freely control the speed of the motor means that the distance traveled by the ball screw can be freely controlled, thus allowing the drive distance of the robo cylinder to be adjusted.
Since robo cylinders are small in size, a single-axis robot is used for large-sized applications.
Robo cylinders are the trade name for IAI's electric actuators, which are intended as a high-performance replacement for air cylinders. Recently, IAI has also been marketing a product called ELECYLINDER, which is aimed at the air cylinder replacement market.
Robo cylinders have functions such as position operation, positioning operation, and pushing operation, making them considerably more sophisticated than air cylinders.
In position operation, the stop position, travel speed, acceleration, etc., called the position, are registered in advance, and the cylinder moves to the registered position by specifying the position number from a host device such as a PLC.
In positioning operation, the amount of travel (or stop position), travel speed, and acceleration are specified directly from a host device such as a PLC.
The pushing operation performs pushing operation with the set pushing force. These operations are set by a teaching pendant or PC software and controlled from a host device.
Positioning operation is used for multi-point position transfer, positioning operation is used when the host device sets the moving position by calculation, etc., and pressing operation is used for constant-pressure clamping of workpieces, etc.
In addition, although parallel IO has been commonly used for connection to a host device, recently many field network-compatible models have been sold, making it possible to easily support various systems.
Robo cylinders, like air cylinders, come in two main types. One is the rod type and the other is the slider type.
The rod type has an extendable and retractable rod, which requires a larger installation space, but is suitable for pushing movements, etc. The slider type has an extendable and retractable rod, which requires a larger installation space, but is suitable for pushing operations. However, in order to accommodate radial loads, it must be used in combination with a linear motion guide, or a guided type must be selected.
The slider type is integrated with a linear motion guide and can be used by directly mounting a moving object on the slider.
In the case of the rod type, the guide receives the moment load, so there is no problem if you select a model that can produce thrust in excess of the required thrust.
For the slider type, the model should be selected so that it falls within the tolerance of the integrated linear motion guide.
First, determine the moment load applied to the slider from the center of gravity position and weight of the moving object attached to the slider. At this time, select a model so that the allowable moment load is not exceeded.
Next, check the payload at the operating speed in the speed-carrying weight table in the catalog, and make sure that the weight of the moving object does not exceed the payload. Note that the payload varies greatly between horizontal and vertical mounting.
*Including some distributors, etc.
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