World’s largest robot?

The M-2000iA is the world’s largest and strongest six-axis robot, claims Rich Meyer, product manager, Fanuc Robotics. “It has the longest reach and the strongest wrist– surpassing all other six-axis robots available today,” he says. The company introduced its M-2000iA line of super heavy-duty robots in a fabrication system demonstration during IMTS 2008, at McCormick Place in Chicago.

Designed to meet customer requirements for handling truck, tractor, and automotive frames and parts, Fanuc’s M-2000iA/900L heavy-duty robot offers a 900 kg payload. It is said to have a rigid arm design with a vertical lifting stroke of 6.2 m for transferring extremely heavy items such as a car body. An even stronger model, the M-2000iA/1200, offers a 1,200 kg payload. It can support that payload with a 1.25 m offset from the faceplate and full articulated motion at the wrist. The strongest power for all six axes enables a single robot to handle a super heavy part, which previously required dual robots.

In the IMTS demonstration, an M-2000iA/900L robot positioned a tractor frame near an R-2000iB/165F robot. The R-2000iB, equipped with the company’s iRVision 3DL picked randomly piled brackets and placed them on the tractor frame with power clamps to hold the brackets in place. The M-2000iA/900L then moved the tractor frame to two quad-arm Arc Mate robots for simulated welding of the brackets to the frame. Upon completion of the weld cycle, all 11 robots demonstrated envelope or coordination paths. Finally, the R-2000iB robot returned the brackets to the pick station and the cycle repeated itself.

www.gefanuc.com

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