How to Choose a Robotic Plate Mover
Throughout your daily activities in the lab, having assembly equipment and lab automation robots to help you with the heavy lifting pays dividends. Having a flexible robotic arm to assist you in the laboratory improves the productivity and timing of lab automation projects.
This robotic arm is used in various study fields, including exploration, e-health, and the reliability testing of manufactured products like smartphone screens. Labs and research and development (R&D) units rely on these robotic arms considerably to help them carry out essential tasks.
When choosing a robotic plate mover to aid you during your next project or task, these are the key elements to look for, so you get the most functional equipment at your disposal when you need it most.
Robotic plate movers are assembly equipment that work best when they have optimal degrees of freedom (DoF). This is the specific number of axes a rigid body moves freely within a 3D space.
Robotic plate movers with six or seven DoF are particularly ideal, reaching any given point in that space, regardless of the orientation. A six DoF robotic plate mover, integrated with automation scheduling software can open a drawer and retrieve a plate in a nest and then close the door A seven DoF flexible robotic arm operates much like the human arm, replicating human arm motion, reaching inaccessible spots, and possessing more agility.
With more DoF, the robotic plate arm has more reach, meaning that the distance from the robot’s center to the fullest extension of the flexible robotic arm is long enough
After analyzing the DoF, it’s time to examine the reach and strength of the robotic plate mover. The strength includes the maximum payload, meaning how many heavy items it can carry at one time. For this type of flexible robotic arm/assembly equipment to work best, it needs to be able to move heavy objects with ease while also applying maximum force to an object. An optimally functioned robotic plate mover will have optimal strength. However, it’s important to point out that the higher the maximum payload is, the more inaccurate the plate mover will be.
Most laboratory processes do not require a great deal of arm payload to move plates from instrument nest to instrument nest. It’s best to acquire a robotic arm that meets or exceeds your minimum payload requirements.
Accuracy and speed are crucial elements that a robotic plate mover should have. Precision is a must if interaction with small parts is necessary. Additionally, the plate mover must have strong robot repeatability, meaning that the robot can consistently reproduce the same motions in unchanged conditions. This is helpful anytime a pick and place task must be carried out within a laboratory. The more time it is with repetitive tasks, the better the productivity.
Consider the use of a Cobot or Collaborative robot in the lab environment. A collaborative robot, is a robot intended for direct human robot interaction within a shared space, or where humans and robots are in close proximity. This type of robot does not require the use of expensive safety guarding. Learn more with Retisoft.
