New heavy-duty robot system with maintenance-free energy supply from igus®

• What was needed: energy chain with reverse bend radius (Reverse Bend Radius), chainflex®-cable
• Requirements: particularly mobile energy and signal supply to robot rotation axis, high mechanical stress due to salt water and sometimes extreme temperatures
• Industry: ship crane, offshore
• Success for the customer: all services from chains to guide trough to cable from a single source, innovative solution for a special application, installation of the solution in the robot's rotary module, durable and low-maintenance energy supply solution

In industry, more and more processes are being automated in order to achieve higher cycle rates, relieve people of heavy labour and save costs at the same time. This trend can also be observed on oil drilling platforms: The start-up company RDS Robotic Drilling Systems AS in Stavanger, Norway - a centre of the European oil industry - is developing robots with the aim of completely automating drilling work on oil drilling platforms.
To achieve this goal, however, energy, media and signals must first be reliably channelled to the robots' grippers. Alongside other systems, the focus here is on the so-called 'Drillfloor' heavy-duty robot with six axes and a load capacity of 1,500 kilograms on an outstretched, three-metre-long robot arm and a newly developed gripper. It controls the drilling process. The seventh axis of the 'Drillfloor Robot' is a heavy-duty linear system on which the complete robot and load travel. This presented the designers with the challenge of designing the energy and signal supply system to be suitably mobile - and that in extremely confined spaces. In contrast to the linear movement of the seventh axis, the necessary mobile energy and signal supply on the rotary axis of the robot base proves to be much trickier.
In addition, the robotic systems work under difficult conditions and must be resistant to salt water, corrosion, mechanical stress and sometimes extreme temperatures. There are also stringent explosion protection requirements in this area.

Today, the energy supply is solved with a rotary module from igus®. This is an energy chain that is used lying on its side and works with a "reverse bend radius" (reverse bend radius). The chain links move in both directions, unlike with conventional linear travel paths. The chain is used in a round guide trough. The maintenance-free plastic energy chains can also be used without restrictions despite the high requirements for corrosion resistance in offshore applications. The installation of the rotary module in the robot housing required professional engineering and was solved by igus® by a project engineering team. The result is a complete solution in a special robot installation in which, in addition to the rotary module, the chainflex® cable from igus® is also used, which is certified for potentially explosive areas and also in accordance with NEK 606. The cables were developed from the ground up for mobile applications and impress with their long service life, even under extreme conditions. igus® guarantees a service life of 36 months on all cables in the programme and has already certified 403 cables from the programme in accordance with DNV GL offshore regulations.
But igus® components are also used on other automation units in the unmanned oil drilling process. Both the so-called 'Electric Roughneck' and the 'Pipe Handler' run on energy chains - 25 pieces in total. They are arranged on the masts, i.e. on the vertical axes of the handling systems, with which the 'stands' are removed from the supply and fed to the central robot.