I'm just wondering are there any mechanical do's and don't for mounting a robot upsidedown on a celing. In this case it is a Kuka KR3 R540. The only difficulty I can see from a mechanical perspective is bolting it in position. Do people use hoists when doing this? I'm not an automation engineer so I'm ignorant of robotic programming in general but imagine there is no difference in programming required when roof mounting? I will reach out to Kuka also but said I'd ask here too.
Roof Mounting - Do's and Don'ts
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prephil -
February 23, 2022 at 10:01 AM -
Thread is Unresolved
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Make sure that the structure is #1, strong enough and #2, rigid enough. I was on an installation once when the hanging robots caused the structure to shake when they moved quickly, stopped quickly. It looked bad. There were no failures or catastrophe, but they got around to adding more gussets quickly.
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A KR3 should be fine mounted inverted, but will still require a software config to tell it it's inverted. This will usually rotate $WORLD so that Z+ still points "up". You should check with KUKA for specifics, though.
Larger robots (generally, anything with a counterbalance) will often need a specific hardware version, or mechanical alteration, to operate inverted. The number of times I've seen someone buy a Floor robot, mount it to the ceiling, then wonder why it won't work....
As Lemster said, any such frame needs to be robust. Keep in mind that robot forces on the mount are highly dynamic, not static -- the accel/decel motions of the robot could easily cause forces on the mount point an order of magnitude higher than the static loading. On a small robot like the KR3 it's less of an issue, but still an issue. As the robot gets bigger, the dynamic load issues scale exponentially.
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rigid structure goes without saying - it need to be able to handle robot with max payload and acceleration.
I agree on KR3R540. this model has no counterbalance and no oil and that makes thins simple.
but this is not the case for many other robots. examples of robots that need modification before they can be operated with ceiling or wall mount configuration is any robot that has counterbalance. another is any robot that requires different oil quantities depending on mounting. wrong oil quantity is not just matter of lubrication - oil is liquid, it is not compressible and it is in a sealed off chamber. this can be serious impediment to robot motion. i recall robot that sounded like a boat that lost chain and anchor. it looked and sounded like jack hammer and all that was needed is correct quantity of oil for used mounting orientation.
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