Development and application of a SCARA welding robot with novel teaching function

This paper is to present a SCARA welding robot system with novel online welding teach function named handheld welding teaching (HWT), the mechanical structure of the SCARA robot has been adapted, include using two-layer reduction in the robot joints, adding magnet-clutch between the motor shaft and gear in each joint, equipping gravity balance device. With the adaptations the operator can move the end-effector with hand directly through disconnecting the clutch. With HWT the users can establish the feature mapping from workpiece to machine easily. Using optimal space arc interpolation algorithm based on vector and GA algorithm to achieve efficiently real-time motion control. Through The welding experiment, the SCARA robot with HWT function is proved to be fast and practical, can serve more small and medium-sized enterprises and meet the industrial actual application.