Use of High Strength Fibre Ropes in Multi-Rope Kinematic Robot Systems
High strength fibre ropes are facing a strongly increasing interest for rope driven applications. Basic characteristics such as strength are already competitive or even outperforming wire ropes; however other limitations still prevent their full reliable
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Abstract High strength fibre ropes are facing a strongly increasing interest for rope driven applications. Basic characteristics such as strength are already competitive or even outperforming wire ropes; however other limitations still prevent their full reliable industrial use. One particular application where the advantages of high strength fibre ropes do have an extraordinary important effect on the usability of the application is the use in robot systems with multi-rope kinematics. Basic requirements of these systems are (among others) high accuracy paired with a high efficiency, which means high process velocities as well as high accelerations and decelerations. Many tests have already been conducted to simulate a wide range of load settings— however up to date testing of fibre ropes in high speed usage is still mostly missing. This article describes the state of the art of high strength fibre rope usage in material handling, discusses advantages and disadvantages of these ropes and points out the most important challenges for research and improvement of rope driven robot systems.
1 Introduction At present high strength fibre ropes are already used as high efficient suspension elements and are therefore a good choice for a wide range of applications, such as manufacturing processes or materials handling processes. Conventional materials handling systems driven by wire ropes are coming to their limits with regards to high process speeds and minimisation of process times, so there is a significant trend towards establishment of high strength fibre ropes in these applications where low weight, high strength and low inertia are basic prerequisites. Analyses focusing J. C. Weis (B) · B. Ernest · K.-H. Wehking Institute of Mechanical Handling and Logistics (IFT), Universität Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany e-mail: [email protected] T. Bruckmann and A. Pott (eds.), Cable-Driven Parallel Robots, Mechanisms and Machine Science 12, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-31988-4_12, © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013
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on behaviour of high strength fibre ropes at high dynamic usage are not available up to today, so obviously there is demand to research on their dynamic resistance. Fast loading, changing loads, load oscillations and the influences on related rope characteristics (e.g. bending fatigue) also need to be analysed and for later use in practice. One example from the field of materials handling processes are robot systems which are born by multi-rope kinematics. For an effective and economic use of these systems high accelerations and velocities (i.e. low process times) are mandatory. As these robot systems also need a high positioning precision it is obvious that focusing on these applications allows development of basic fundamentals regarding the design of configurable large-scale rope kinematics for rope-born robots as well as for further rope applications.
2 High Strength Fibre Rope Research 2.1 State of Research Standards for design and testing of high strength fibre ropes in
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