NUMERICAL STRENGTH ANALYSIS OF THE LOAD-BEARING FRAME OF A PALLETIZING ROBOT'S UNIVERSAL HEAD

The paper deals with numerical strength analysis of the load-bearing structure of an industrial robot's head used for palletization of sacks. The calculations were performed with the Finite Element Method (FEM), enabling reconstruction of the real service conditions in the process of palletization. It was assumed, that the head was adapted to lay two sacks of maximal dimensions 800x500x140mm and a mass of up to 50 kg at a time. The currently exploited palletizing heads are heavy, which essentially increases the costs of the palletization process. The aim of the study was a numerical analysis of the existing head of the palletizing robot, leading to design of a structure having optimized maintenance parameters. The conducted research on decreasing the mass of the palletizing robot's head are important because of the industrial robot's load-bearing capacity, its effectiveness and the costs of the palletization process.