Mechanical properties of manipulator with steel sandwich plates for the parallel laser welding robot

In order for decreasing the weight of industrial robot manipulator with high stiffness, the sandwich panel structure is adopted for the parallel laser welding robot manipulators. So, about 37% of the weights of robot manipulators is reduced in our research. The straight line and circle welding joint experiments are made by the parallel laser welding robot with three branches. The end precision of the robot is surveyed online by the CMM (Cordinate Measuring Machine). The measurement data indicate that the end position precision of parallel robots is about 0.2mm. The end posture precision is about 0.05 degrees. Laser welding seams are of good qualities. Experimental results verify that the end accuracy of the robot can meet the requirement of laser welding with high precisions and high stiffness. It is feasible that robot manipulators adopt the sandwich plate structure for the accurate operations.