OT: Panel Subplate Holder

Hi all. Im trying to find a subplate holder for our panel builders. Ive seen ones where you can tilt, rotate, and raise/lower the subplate while your wiring it. I cannot find one online at all tho, anyone know what these things are called? Thanks

matt

If you've seen one it was probably homemade. We've been trying to come up with something like this for years with no success. This has been discussed before somewhat in a thread I started.

http://www.plctalk.net/qanda/showthread.php?t=34634

Wow, one would think it would be something common. Im not sure if the one was homemade, it was a picture during an install of some software. Hmmm.

Basically, our poor panel builders are sick of leaning over the subplates.

In a company i used to work for our panel shop had a couple very old fanuc robots that had been taken out of service at a plant and upgraded with newer models.

The customer charged us with taking care of the old one's so we brought them back to the shop for spare parts or maybe to sell on ebay.They were complete with controlcabinet and teach pendants.

We had the machine shop build some end of arm tooling for them that would hold a 2 ton magnet with the manual handle and we used these to hold our panel back plates .it would do any size and could be oriented in any direction you can imagine.

we used a third one with some different end of arm tooling that fit into holed we wold drill in the top or middle of the backplate that would accept a 1/2 inch quick release pin and this one was used to transfer the backplate into the enclosure

Worked smooth as silk and was very cheap to do with old stuff.

At the last place I worked, I built one. It was mainly angle iron with holes drilled in it for various subplate attachments. It had two pieces of pipe that turned inside of each other and a swivel point in the middle of the panel holder that let the panel invert. Took me about a day to design and get welded up. It was much better than propping the panel on saw horses or leaning it up against the wall.

Here's a possibility for a positioner for a subpanel holder.

http://www.monsterballvise.com/

Brian

I just happen to have a fairly large robot arm just sitting in the warehouse doing nothing too. Thats GENIUS! Thank you! Time to get a project going.

matt

Watch out though it will make you lazy.

Sitting in a chair and moving the work as needed it is a real pain if you ever have to go back to the old fashioned way.

I always had a few of those magnetic parts bowl to stick to the backpanel to hold screws,ferrules and the rectangular ones to hold my screwdrivers and other stuff.

Using this method for panel placement is what saved me the most.I could install a large backplate fully loaded with drives,plc chasis,etc completely by myself and save my hands from getting torn up trying to lower that into a can and align correctly.

Glad you liked it.

The robot is a Kuka ir761 125/150. There is no cabinet nor pendant. Do you think its still worth pursing? I cant find a lot of info on it, but judging from the newer kr761 125/150s the 150 seems to designate a 150kg payload. Wouldnt most subplates weigh more than this?

Have seen welding positioners. Believe a small one could be made from a truck front axle (cut in half or maybe less) then mounted to floor (or poured into a concrete column below floor). Wheel with a mounting plate would allow rotation, built in brakes could hold work in position. Now all you need to do is set up a linkage to let wheel assy pivot on the king pin and have locking feature. If set axle at an angle you could pivot the work almost thru a 90 arc from vertical to horizontal.

Dan Bentler

What we were using was a M-900iA/600 fanuc and to my best memory it was rated to 600kg.

I am not sure about kuka robots as i have never used them only fanuc and motoman.

Drives and ups systems and such contribute to most of the weight.

I would say it would be worth it depending on the amount and size of panels you build. It put our production through the roof by turning many 2-3 man jobs into 1 ( panel placement)and just making it easier most of the time makes it faster.

There are many places online that sell used robots for a fair cost many of the heavy lifting models come from automotive plants.

Here are a few links.

http://www.used-robots.com/

http://www.industrialrobotix.com/

http://www.kcrobotics.com/