Robust Tolerance Design Applied on Robot Concept Development

Paper in proceedings, 2010

A robust tolerance design concept based on locating schemes (for example, used in the car industry for sheet metal parts) and the methods and tools connected to that concept are applied on a new robot development. A case study of a robot assembly is performed in a new robot development project. The robot is mainly designed using machined parts, and traditionally these parts are toleranced using feature-to-feature based tolerances and linear dimensioning. The goal of this case study is to see if there are any advantages to using a new approach when designing robots to enable high geometric quality at a low cost. With limitations, the study shows that it seems possible to effectively use the tolerance design concept in robot development with assemblies consisting of machined parts.