Harmonic Drive
6-Axis Robot Primary Axes
Hollow-shaft
Integrated output bearing
Industrial robotics continues to be one of the major application areas for Harmonic Drive® gears. This application example shows the base and shoulder axes of a 6-axis robot for assembly and arc welding applications.
This application requires backlash-free gears with high torque capacity, high torsional stiffness and excellent repeatability. This design uses a special variant of our HFUS-2UH Units with a hollow-shaft design. Both axes are supported only by the high capacity output-side bearing of the unit.
The HFUS product range features a particularly strong cross-roller bearing and is therefore ideally suited to applications in the primary axes of robots, where there are significant tilting moments on the output-side bearing of the gears in each joint. This design example shows a particularly interesting use of the hollow-shaft.
The hollow input shaft is connected to the motor shaft by means of a shaft coupling, which is mounted inside the hollow shaft to reduce the axial length of the motor-gear assembly. This design solution is particularly compact and allows the motor to be readily disassembled from the gear for maintenance purposes.
