Industry 4.0 is the fourth revolution in the industry and defines a further optimization of industrial production by using modern technologies for communication, digitalization, cloud integration and artificial intelligence. One big advantage is production lines will become more flexible with the capability to produce different variations of a product, or even different products, on the same line without the need for a complex reconfiguration of the production line. Robots must be flexible and able to handle different tasks at different places within the production line. This requires modular systems that are easy to transport, which can be connected together in a few minutes and reprogrammed for another task.
This customer designed an extremely flexible, modular, robot system consisting of arms, joints, grippers, drills and other tools, which can be connected and reconfigured in a few minutes. A modular software package allows fast reprogramming of the robot for new tasks. For a first prototype, a lab power supply was used to drive the 48V motors with up to 800W power. For the final version, the customer needed an extremely small solution with easy heat management suitable for use in DIN EN60204-1 environments (safety if industrial machinery environment and meeting the 4kV reinforced isolation requirements.
Standard industrial power supplies may meet some of these requirements, but the biggest challenges were finding a unit fitting into the available space in the robot’s base unit that could be conduction-cooled to avoid audible noise and the reliability issues of fans.
RECOM was able to provide an ideal solution. It is one of the world’s smallest conduction-cooled
AC/DC power supplies, fan-less and therefore mountable on the chassis of the base unit and able to deliver up to 1000W continuous and 1200W peak power (for 10s) purely with natural convection cooling. The unit works from worldwide AC mains and is certified for
industrial and
medical standards, which cover the 4kV reinforced isolation requirements. Deployment is therefore possible in industrial applications requiring DIN EN60204-1 compliance.
The 24V/100W
industrial power supply for the robot’s industrial controller unit is derived from the 48V bus with one of RECOM’s small,
industrial DC/DC converters. It also has baseplate cooling like the
AC/DC supply and can be
mounted on the chassis of the base unit to deliver full power without any fan. This was a perfect fit for this application. To guarantee a safe startup of the system under all conditions, the 5V standby output of the AC/DC unit is used to supply housekeeping and startup functions within the robot’s control system.
This unique
AC/DC power supply even has an adjustable 12V/1A auxiliary output for fans. Although under normal operating conditions, no fan is used, it is used by the customer to protect the system from overheating under abnormal operating conditions. If someone accidentally blocks the natural convection airflow for example, the fan starts to work to avoid overheating and audible/optic warning signals inform the operator.
