The Power Behind Industrial Robots: Understanding Different Types of Reducers

A. What is an Industrial Robot Reducer?

First of all, we would like to know what’s basically an Industrial Robot Reducer? An industrial robot reducer is especially made for keeping a robot working reliability and working perfection due to the day by day increasing load of robotic operation by use of the better than the best integrated parts for the guaranteed industrial production maximum profit.

Reducers are widely used in industrial robotics field. The different kinds of robots i.e., the three axis and the six axis industrial robots are equipped with A.C., current operated servo motors which also have also co-equipped braking system. 

Quite some time before when robots’ usage was becoming popular day by day one of the famous robot Manufacturer ABB (Asea Brown Boveri) which is a Swedish-Swiss Multinational Automation Technology Corporation used their own gear configurations to slow down the robot in-between working.

Nowadays, in these tough & harsh industrial environments all the 1, 2 and 3 axis of the State of The Art industrial Robots which are 6 axis use RV Reducers as it’s a must to do so. Such RV speed reducers belong to cycloidal pin wheel mechanism class. 

It’s important to keep in mind that the 4, 5 & 6 axis normally switch to harmonic reducers usage. Since the bearings are specially designed with a very precise mechanism that’s why an RV reducer has a small dimension of axis. That’s why most of the Chinese domestic industrial manufacturers specifically use speed reducers made by Japan’s FANUC & Teijin.

As the industrial robots are nowadays also widespread in used in automobiles production, foodstuff machinery processing plants, electrical products manufacturing companies and a lot of other industrial assembly lines. 

With the day by day increasing costs of labor worldwide the trend of robot usage instead of Man Labor has increased dramatically as the all type of large or small items and heavy products made by robot are best in quality & durability & their over all working, performance and life long usage expectancy is far superior than products assembled by a human being.               

Speaking in Terms of Expenditure/Cost as how much a robot total cost is, so it is as follows.

A robot over all Body Machining cost ratio is around 15% and its total Control Systems cost ratio is close to 15%. While a robot overall Servo Systems cost ratio is 20%, Robot Reducer System cost is roundabout 35% & the rest 15% cost is of necessary Robot Auxiliary Systems which makes it possible a Fully Systemized Industrial robot to run at full working capacity.                           

As we very well know that the world’s main famous international robot companies are Yaskawa Motoman, ABB & KUKA but a lot of market is also captured by International Japanese robot manufacturers like FANUC robots, Panasonic robots, Denso robots, Mitsubishi robots, Kawasaki robots & many more Japanese companies to count.

Some of the key uses of Industrial Robot Reducers are in

• Spraying Robots
• Welding Robots 
• Palletizing Robot Applications

B. Different Types of Industrial Robot Reducers & their uses. 

There are basically three types of industrial robot reducers which are as follows,

• Harmonic Reducer

• RV Reducer  

• Planetary Reducer.

1. What’s an Industrial Robot RV Reducer? 

We will discuss below in detail a Robot RV Reducer as it’s the most common & widely used & type of robot reducers within the worm gear reducer class. It is a worm & worm gear mechanism combination. It has a variable transmission ratio due to its compact size. During some working conditions it has a built-in self-locking mechanism. As

discussed earlier a robot RV Reducer is the mostly used reducer in robot industry due to its less energy use, less vibration & very low noise. 

An RV Reducer is mainly used for high torque & low speed industrial robot applications. The power from a robot servo motor is shifted through the specially made gears to the input shaft of an RV reducer to mesh the special large gears onto the output shaft of the RV reducer to achieve the desired Deceleration (Systematic Speed reduction).

The transmission ratio of a robot RV reducer is the total ratio of number of teeth of the small and large gears.

The input form of a robot RV reducer is as follows: shaft input, hole input & specially extended worm shaft mechanism.

While a robot RV reducer output mechanism is one-sided axis output, hole output & bi-directional axis configuration. 

An RV reducer has an optimal transmission ratio i.e., from 30 to 260 degrees. The working mechanism of RV reducer has been known since a long time as there has been no solid maintenance. It’s interesting to know that close to 80% of RV reducer market is captured by Japanese Famous Names Sumitomo & Nabotesk RV reducers which are the best. 

2. What’s an industrial Robot Harmonic Reducer?  

A Harmonic Reducer is comprised of four important core parts i.e., circular spline, flex spline, flexible bearing & wave generator. The wave generator is fitted together with the flexible bearing in such a way that flexible gear makes under-control elastic deformation & that the meshes to circular spline transfer motion & power. The Harmonic Reducer is precisely positioned in wrist, small arm or hand. An RV Reducer stands for Rotary Vector Reducer which was first made in Japan. It’s a newest combination of planetary gear shifting parts & traditional cycloidal pin wheel system.

3. What’s An Industrial Robot Planetary Reducer?

Fundamentally Planetary Reducers are compact industrial Robot related parts that play an important role in maximizing torque transmission in various robotic industrial environments. The planetary reducer mechanism is to streamline the high torque levels of transmission with the same time decrease of RPM of servo motors for a specified power level step by step. The planetary reducers are a combination of aligned input, output shafts & a Special Gearbox.

Various industrial fully automated systems, DC transmission systems, systematic stepping systems & servo control systems fully use planetary reducers for efficient various tasks management which need extreme levels of torque.                  

A Planetary Reducer is the third type of reducer used in Industrial Robot working & applications. A planetary robot reducer has its own working classification, working & mechanism. It has its own usage pattern and is different from the above two types of above robot reducers.

4. Market Share & Usage of the 3 types of robot reducers.

The market share and usage of Harmonic Reducer, RV Reducer & Planetary Reducers are approximately 40%. In an Articulated Robot type the RV Reducer is generally used in the exact positioning of ultra large loads such as shoulder, big arm and base.