Sliprings with customer lanes

Product Wishlist
1

Summary

The availability of general purpose slip ring contacts would improve applications a lot and clean up the cable mess.

What is it?

Provide some additional slip ring contacts that are to be used by the customer, so he can use it to connect to his payload. At the flange it makes sense to provide that contacts in a second connector. I think 12 lanes is a good number, that will suit customers with that problem very well, but more is always appreciated.

Why is it needed?

Currently, through the Robot Joints, there is only 24V and RS4something for grippers. So, grippers can be used smoothly without ugly and disturbing cabling along the robot arm, while cabling to power the payload and “speak with it” has to be done outside. Not only does it look crappy, it’s also a real challenge to give the cables enough freedom to enable all needed robot operations, but still make sure that it can never get over the gripper or payload.

2

Judging from your writing, it sounds like you’re not aware of the actual signals in the tool connector.

There’s more signals available than just the serial connection. For example two outputs and two inputs:

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That being said, it’s always nice with more available signals. :slight_smile: And two pneumatic hoses would be awesome, as well. I’m afraid, though, that it’s not realistic. UR would have implemented it by now if it were.

3

Additional slip ring contacts would definitely simplify integration of custom payloads. Running external cables not only looks messy but also limits motion flexibility. A clean internal solution could open more reliable options for advanced tools.

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