Model driven mechatronic design optimization of a linear axis press tending robot

One of ABB´s solutions for interpress automation is a linear 7th axis robot (ABB IRB 7600FX). The key performance measure of an interpress robot is given in strokes per minute (SPM). Press lines are moving towards increased efficiency in throughput and therefore higher performance of the interpress robots is often demanded by the customer. The target for the design optimization described in this paper is to increase the performance of the IRB 7600FX by 10%. The optimizations and investigations have shown that the IRB7600FX can be optimized to achieve and even exceed the targeted performance. Significant improvement of the cycle time performance can be achieved by software changes and no or small design / hardware changes while sacrificing no or only little of expected lifetime. Ultra-fast performance (>25% increase) can also be achieved with the Linear 7th Axis Robot concept, but would require re-design efforts of the current system.