Maintenance Guide for End Effectors

End Effectors and harnesses on a robot can have problems which have to do with the cables and hoses becoming damaged over time. Rotation and linear movement causes cables and hoses to break or leak. Dust and dirt damage linear bearings and actuator seals. Often, problems become intermittent as the cycle of the robot can cause a problem in one position and not the other. The clever maintenance tech knows this has to do with the robot harness.

if you have not replaced a robot harness, you will be in for an experience as it is very hard and time consuming. When a robot is assembled. the order of assembly generally makes the harness easy to install. But after everything has be placed inside the robot, it becomes very hard to "simply replace" the harness. Often you have to remove internal components having nothing to do with the problem.

Replacing the bearing cartridge on a linear bearing gets harder and harder over time as most end effectors have aluminum frames. The threads and inserts wear out quickly and threads stretch from improper torque.

We suggest identifying the problem before it happens and here is a guide to some of the things we use at BTS to keep a robot harness from being damaged