Rotation can be the key to keeping things fresh. You rotate players in sports, you rotate records in a playlist, and you rotate produce in a grocery store. Rotation is also how Sercos International, the company behind the Sercos automation bus, stays fresh and innovative in robotics. Rotation in robotics — at least the kind of rotation we’re talking about here — is a unique and impressive advancement.
Rotating doesn’t seem like a complex movement to the average person. You can stick your hand out and rotate it it with is. Your head swivels and rotates on your neck. Infants pick this up at an early age. Easy stuff right?
When it comes to robotics, rotation isn’t as simple. The engineering that is involved to create those simple biological movements is pretty in depth. There are a lot of moving parts that have to work together in order to recreate what you and I can manage with a flick of the wrist.
The Sercos Veloce implements X,Y, and Z translations which are necessary for rotating movements in machinery. This rotational movement is ideal for packaging, pharmaceutical, solar, food processing, and semi conductor industries.
The innovation in the Sercos design is the integrated rotation. It’s actually part of the robot’s architecture which means that an additional rotation link and motor aren’t required. There are only mechanical links between the traveling plate and the motor.
This is great news for Indramat and Rexroth users. “Bosch Rexroth’s open core engineering allows the company to directly connect to the PLC via a self-developed App running on an Apple iPad. Motion controls, drives, vision and sensors are all interconnected via the Sercos automation bus that enables the interaction.”