Design and Development of a 6-Axis Robotic Manipulator for Paint Application

Abstract

The automotive industry has manual painting operations involved in small scale industries particularly in under-developed countries like Pakistan. Automobile bodies, if painted manually, expose the paint workers to the chemicals present in the paint and increases their risk of developing respiratory tract cancers and other similar diseases. Manual paint application consumes more paint in comparison to an automated process for the paint application with the obvious reduction in the speed of the job. Our project is an industrial solution for the local automobile industries based in Pakistan which cannot afford expensive industrial robots to automate their manual processes like paint application of automobile parts and body. A 6-Axis articulated robot is capable of replacing the human workers in the paint application industries and enhance the speed while giving the optimal paint consumption during the process. Our robotic manipulator is a general-purpose prototype which can be used in paint application, welding, plasma cutting and process industry as a pick and place robot or by performing other specialized functions demanding high repeatability and speed. By changing the end-effector being used, the functionality of the manipulator can be changed easily. The design of the robot is basically inspired from KUKA-KR5 and FANUC-M10 series. A robotic arm can be made to follow certain trajectories with certain angular velocities, and can be controlled in a variety of ways.