STIFFNESS DISCUSSION ON GANTRY ROBOTS' NEW APPLICATION AS A PROCESS TOOL.

The gantry robot is specically designed for large scale manufacturing process application requiring a large work envelope or where floor space is critical. It has been used successfully in many material handling applications in the past. This paper will address the new applications of the gantry robot as a light machining process tool, and set up measurable error parameters allowing the user to evaluate the robot acceptance for their application. These error parameters can yield a total process placement accuracy resulting from both passive and dynamic errors. To do so this paper will define robot faceplate stiffnesses in several directions and provide a method of combining axis accuracies of a six degree of freedom robot to obtain an overall tool tip accuracy magnitude.