Development of a Portable Welding Robot with EtherCAT Interface

Authors: Juyi Park, Sang-Bum Lee, Jin-Wook Kim, Ji-Yoon Kim, Jung-Min Kim, Hee-Hwan Park, Jae-Won Seo, Gye-Hyung Kang, Soo-Ho Kim

Abstract:

This paper presents a portable robot that is to use for welding process in shipbuilding yard. It has six degree of freedom and 3kg payload capability. Its weight is 21.5kg so that human workers can carry it to the work place. Its body mainly made of magnesium alloy and aluminum alloy for few parts that require high strength. Since the distance between robot and controller should be 50m at most, the robot controller controls the robot through EtherCAT. RTX and KPA are used for real time EtherCAT control on Windows XP. The performance of the developed robot was satisfactory, in welding of U type cell in shipbuilding yard.

Keywords: Portable welding robot, Shipbuilding, EtherCAT

Digital Object Identifier (DOI): doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1331721

References:

[1] EtherCAT technology group, "EtherCAT The Ethernet Fieldbus", http://www.ethercat.org.
[2] S.G. Robertz et al., "Industrial robot motion control with real-time Java and EtherCAT," IEEE Conf. Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation, 2007, pp. 1453-1456.
[3] Y. Moon et al., "A study on Development of Soft-Motor Controller using EtherCAT," Journal of Korean institute of intelligent systems, 2007, Vol. 17, No. 6, pp. 826-831.
[4] IntervalZero website.https://www.intervalzero.com
[5] Koenig website. https://koenig-pa.com
[6] Copley Controls, "Manual: Accelnet Plus Module EtherCAT AEM" http://www.copleycontrols.com/Motion/pdf/AEM-ds.pdf
[7] Y. Estrin et al., "Microstructure, texture and mechanical properties of the magnesium alloy AZ31 processed by ECAP," Int. J. Materials Research, Jan. 2008, pp. 50-55.