A dress pack inspection takes a few minutes and is usually done during a planned stop for something else. The value is not in any single inspection — it is in recording them, so that a trend becomes visible before it becomes a stoppage.
Every planned stop — visual, a few minutes
- Protection sleeves and corrugated tube: burn-through, wear on one side, hardening or discolouration
- Clamps and clamping rings: still tight, no witness marks or flattening of the cores
- Fixing brackets: secure, nothing working loose
- Hoses and fittings: no weeping, no stiffening, no kinks that were not there before
- Chafe points: anywhere the package now touches the robot, fixture or guarding
- Service loops: still free through the full cycle, not fouling anything
Periodically — longer inspection
- Run the robot slowly through the full programme and watch the pack, especially at full extension and at wrist extremes. Most routing faults are only visible in motion
- Check the free lengths either side of every clamp — if a clamp has moved, the torsion per metre has changed
- Inspect where the package enters the closed housing or tube, the point that sees the most combined bending and torsion
- Look at the cable entry to the tool, the hottest and most-exposed part of most packs
- Confirm the spares you hold still match the pack fitted
After any intervention
Whenever the robot, the tool or the fixture changes — a new gripper, a re-taught path, a fixture moved — re-check the routing. A programme change that looks minor can put the tightest bend somewhere new, and the pack will not tell you until months later.
What to record, and why
Date, what was inspected, what was found, and what was replaced. One worn clamp is an observation. The same clamp worn three times is a design problem, and only the record makes that visible. If you are using DCDI, the documentation and history live against the specific robot rather than in a folder somebody has to find.
Replace on schedule, not on failure
Protection sleeves, corrugated tube and tube protectors exist to be consumed. Replacing them on a schedule is what allows the cable package underneath to reach its full life; leaving them until they fail transfers the damage to the expensive part. This is the single highest-return habit in dress pack maintenance.
What not to do
- Do not add cable ties to “tidy” a package — a tie that fixes a point the design left free changes the torsion distribution and creates a failure point
- Do not replace a protection sleeve with tape
- Do not re-clamp a bundle with a single ring to save time
- Do not ignore an intermittent fault that clears on restart
Related reading
Why robot cables fail · Service life · Routing rules · Spare parts · Replacement and retrofit
Ask us for the maintenance documentation for your specific pack.
