Carriages for Industrial Robot Movement

Carriages for robot movement play an essential role in the systems where they are installed. Robot movement, in fact, is achieved by adding an axis connected to the base, a carriage. This carriage allows the Lesta industrial painting robot, within the complete system, to extend its working area, a concept related to broader industrial robot design.

Lesta’s range of carriages for robot movement includes 2 types of carriages for robot movement:

• Floor carriages consist of a rail system, with a motorized plate that slides on top of it. The system is connected to the robot being moved and also records movement on this axis.

• Overhead carriages (or gantries) consist of bridges supported by uprights fitted with rails on which the plate slides, with the robot connected upside down beneath it. In this case too, the movement of this axis is recorded during the self-learning function. This type of carriage can add more than one axis to the overall system, and can move the robot longitudinally as well as horizontally and vertically.

All carriage systems (both overhead and floor) are generally equipped with a plug-in called “Follow me”, which allows the robot to follow the operator naturally during path recording.

Why install carriages for industrial robot movement

Carriages for industrial robot movement make it possible to extend the working area covered by a single robot without having to add further robots along the line, thereby reducing both the overall investment and the footprint of the system.

A robot mounted on a carriage can serve several work stations in sequence, moving from one point of the line to another, or follow parts longer than those reachable by a fixed robot, without compromising the repeatability of the painting path.

Thanks to the “Follow me” plug-in, programming carriage paths is more intuitive even for operators without prior robotics experience: during the self-learning phase, the robot automatically records both the movement of the arm and the displacement on the carriage axis, without requiring separate programming of the two systems.

This reduces system commissioning time and simplifies updates to the painting cycle whenever the part being processed changes.

Carriages for robot movement in Lesta complete systems

Carriages for industrial robot movement are one of the components that Lesta integrates within its complete industrial painting systems, together with conveyor chains and transport systems that handle the movement of parts along the line. While the latter move the part, carriages move the robot itself, offering a complementary solution when the part is too bulky or too long to be handled easily.

This configuration is particularly suited to the painting of large industrial products, such as boats, earth-moving machinery, trucks and trailers, heavy steel structures and metal frames of non-standard dimensions: the carriage allows the robot to cover the entire length of the part while maintaining the same path accuracy it would have on a smaller part, without having to resort to multiple fixed robots positioned along the line.

Floor carriages and overhead carriages can also be combined with each other within the same system, for example to serve several painting stations in sequence or to cover several movement axes simultaneously on particularly complex parts, aiming at maximum flexibility of the system with respect to the customer’s production needs.

The choice between a floor carriage and an overhead carriage largely depends on the space available in the plant: a floor carriage requires a clear lane on the ground along its entire length, while an overhead carriage frees up floor space beneath the bridge, often making it preferable when the work area must remain accessible to operators or other vehicles during production.