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MULTIFUNCTIONAL ROBOT DRESSPACK MODELING WITH KINEO FLEXIBLE CABLES
To ensure efficiency and reliability in the robotics industry, robots must be equipped with dresspacks containing various types of cables for power and control, such as pneumatic hoses, electrical cables, and protective conduits. Damage to these cables can cause significant downtime. Therefore, simulating the performance of dresspacks before deployment helps maintain workshop productivity.
Kineo Flexible Cables is a software designed to integrate into any application that requires modeling cable deformation while complying with cable routing constraints. It is particularly suitable for simulating industrial robot power supply systems and allows assessment of the physical performance of hoses, cables, and tubes.
In this article, we will explore how the latest version of the software can simulate complex solutions available from dresspack suppliers to minimize cable damage.
Cable Mounting System Simulation
The continuous movement and motion changes of a robot can cause repeated deformation of cables when stretched, twisted, or bent, leading to damage. To reduce wear, dresspacks provide various accessories to allow cables to move freely and minimize maximum stress. For example, ball-joint connectors help reduce tension by allowing the cable end to continuously adapt to the robot’s motion.
Kineo Flexible Cables provides a comprehensive toolkit to model an increasing variety of cable components available in the market. From simple ball-joint terminations and rotating clamps to more complex components, it not only reduces cable strain but also manages risks such as excess cable length.
Cables must be long enough to cover the robot’s full range of motion. However, in shorter ranges, cables may interfere with the robot or its workspace. The solution is to deploy a sophisticated cable mounting system, such as the structure demonstrated in the video below.
Cables are attached to a pulley that can retract freely along a sliding cantilever. The cantilever can also rotate freely to adapt to the robot/cable motion. As a result, the robot has sufficient cable to operate across its full range, while any slack cable is restricted to a safe zone with no robot present.
During simulation, Kineo Flexible Cables considers all defined attachments and calculates the cable path/deformation based on material properties and by modeling any contact between the cable and the robot/environment. The software can also diagnose potential issues by reporting collisions and generating cable stress calculations.
Another solution for excess cable is a cable retraction system. These devices are mounted on the robot to safely feed or retract cables as needed. You can see an example in the video, located just above the robot’s “elbow” joint. Kineo Flexible Cables can model various retraction systems.
Additional Software for Robot Simulation/Control from Kineo
Siemens Digital Industries Software provides additional solutions to extend and accelerate robot simulation and control applications:
- KineoWorks – automatically calculates collision-free trajectories for industrial robots and machine tools. Available as a component with GUI, software vendors, system integrators, and OEMs can easily create custom robot simulation and control applications, reducing risks and saving time.
- KineoWorks Interact – quickly build rich graphical user interfaces for your software applications using 3D visualization tools, user interaction, data import/export, etc., with minimal coding.
- Kineo Collision Detector – performs high-speed collision analysis on mesh surfaces and point cloud data in motion simulation environments such as robot simulation.
Source: Siemens
SDE Digital Technology Co., Ltd (SDE TECH) was established in 2014. By 2018, we were honored to become a Smart Expert Partner – a leading partner of Siemens Digital Industries Software in the Southeast Asia – Pacific region for Siemens NX (Unigraphics NX), Simcenter, Solid Edge, Tecnomatix, and Teamcenter management solutions.
