I-Series Mounting Techniques

Published by Marc Steele on

The open end of the I-60-Series marker has drilled and tapped holes for mounting the debris shield.

At one plant they mounted a standoff bumper for the robot to press the part against.

The frame of the marker is very strong, but is not designed for this purpose.

 This is a No-No

Reason:

Robots are accurate but have a lot of mass and often the gripper (end-effector) and part are production orientated and not held to machinist tolerance.

So the marking head gets hit, transferring the shock & force into the frame of the marker every cycle (often thousands of times a day).

Also making matters worse the vibration from the pin gets transferred back into the marking head frame.

Result:

This can loosen all the bolts, prox switches and hardware in the marker head over time.

Also the tapped holes are only into the edge of the aluminum frame and are not really large enough nor is there room for heli-coil S.S. inserts, so the bolts they use to mount the standoff will loosen and strip out over time.

CMT has done this ourselves, but we mounted these to the side frame large mounting holes and used much larger energy adsorbing bumpers.

This are still is not as good as our Chrysler ones where the bumpers were attached to the machine frame which isolates the shock and vibration even more,

 This customer has had the bolts, proxes, fitting etc all vibrate loose and is now using “Red” thread locker instead of “Blue”.


Marc Steele

Marc has been in the marking business for over 15 years. He provides technical assistance through emails and online chat.