Machining with serial and quasi-serial industrial robots: Comparison analysis and architecture limitations

The paper deals with comparison study of serial and quasi-serial industrial robots used for machining operations. It proposes a new methodology for robot ranking, which is based on estimation of the end-effector resistance to cutting forces for several machining tasks, which are optimally located within the robot workspace. To cover wide range of applications, a set of isotropic, quasi-isotropic and extended benchmark tasks are considered. It is shown that regardless of the benchmark problem, seral manipulators are preferable for small and medium tasks while quasi-serial ones' better suit large-dimensional tasks. The proposed technique was applied for the comparison analysis of 10 industrial robots of both serial and quasi-serial architectures with similar working radius and payload of about 200 kg.