Do-Bot or not Do-Bot? That is the question.

Early in 2023, We had a need at our company to develop a small custom Robot cell for an Educational customer.

It was Important that this product could be clasified as an "Industrial" Robot, and that it would enable the customer to teach the basics of industrial robot programming, along-side some larger robot cells.

While we already sell larger cells with fully industrial Mitsubushi robot arms (see here). We wanted to be able to offer a smaller more cost-sensative product, without compromising on the quality our company is known for.

I spent the next couple of months researching smaller robotic arms. It was important that whatever we chose was sturdy, accurate, and would not end up causing us headaches further down the line. The world of "Educational/Light Industrial" Robot arms is suprisingly large.

Of course there are well known contenders like the Universal Ur3 But this would likley be physically too large, and outside the scope of the product we envisioned.

There are some that are arduino based, some that are Pi based - but none of these seemed to be "Industrial" enough. They felt more like toys, than anything reflective of something actually industrial.

So I was struggling to find something that had the "Industrial" features which we required - what was I lookin

Requirements

So what were the requirements?

• 24V GPIO
  • This is a must to be able to communicate with our hardware range, and be adaptable
• E-Stop
  • We need to make sure the system can be safely stopped in the event of something unexpected. The E-Stop should also affect the GPIO
• IDE / API
  • The IDE needed to ideally be Free. The DobotStudioPro software is a good IDE, but needs some Improvment. It seems to be based on Vue2, and has a bit of a "Laggy" feel to it - but for now it is a functional IDE. I believe there upcoming web-based IDE DobotLab will address most of these issues.
• Intergrated Vacuum Gripper
  • Interestingly the Dobot has a pnuematic gripper included, but no vacuum or pressure generator. This can be purchased as an addon, but since we want to use FESTO components for this, such as the OVEM, this is less of an issue.
• "Cobot" Status (No need for a saftey cage)
  • The DobotMG400 is clacified as a "Desktop Grade Industrial Collaborative Robot" - Perfect

The DobotMG400 manages to fufil all of these requirements, and also matches the asthetic of the FESTO Didactic equipment very well.

The DobotMG400 is programmed using a scratch-like programming environment, which could turn people off, but there is also a very capable LUA environment avaliable, and the exposed API with python links, means that this robot is suitible for even advanced projects.

So whats on the cell?

First we start by adding some pre-assembed components.

• MPS Conveyor
• Control Panel
• Regulator
• FESTO OVEM vacuum generator and sensor.

Next I needed to design a few custom hardware componets, such as the Custom CNC'ed Pallet & guide

Once I had prototyped these as a 3D print, I had these manufactured by Fractory, along with some custom sheet metal brackets.

A 3D STP model of the robot can be seen below!

Putting it all together

The Conveyor, and Contol Panel & Vacumm Generator are wired into the GPIO on the back of the robot.
Some trunking is used to hide some of the messier wiring looms. Normally I like to avoid trunking, but this is the tidiest solution for this location. Finally the whole thing is mounted on a trolly, so it can work with the rest of the FESTO Didactic product range our company supplies.

A Video showing the programming of this station is avaliable below - A more polished version will be released in the coming weeks.

For any more information on this product or our services please contact us at didacticservices.co.uk