Custom dress pack design
Most robot cells are not standard for long. A new tool goes on, a fixture moves, a path is re-taught, and the dress pack that fitted the original layout is now the thing that fails first. Custom design is where the package is built around what the cell actually does rather than what it was originally sold as.
When a standard pack is the wrong answer
- The tool reaches around the workpiece — C-frame rivet, clinch or weld guns
- The envelope is tight enough that a catalogue pack fouls something at full extension
- The cell carries unusual media — rivet feed, adhesive, heated hose, fibre
- Heat or spatter concentrate somewhere a standard pack does not protect
- The robot is on a seventh axis or gantry and the free length changes through travel
- Several processes share one arm and the media count is higher than a catalogue system carries
How the design work runs
1. What the cell actually does
Robot make and model, tool weight and geometry, cycle, reach, media list, environment. Photographs and a programme listing tell us more than a specification sheet, and a video of the cycle tells us most of all.
2. Routing in simulation
Reach, bend radius and torsion per metre are proven against the real path before anything is made — including at full extension and the wrist extremes, which is where catalogue fits usually fail. See routing rules.
3. Specification
Conductors chosen for torsion as well as bending, hoses rated for the media and the heat, protection where spatter actually lands, clamping rings sized per core. Where the motion needs it, RoboRoc or RoboRex manage the slack.
4. Build and test
Assembled and tested electrically and mechanically before it ships — see testing and verification. You get the drawings, the core schedule and the spares list, not just the pack.
What you need to send us
- Robot make, model and mounting
- Tool description and weight
- Media list — power, signal, data, air, water, gas, process media
- Cycle time and a description of the motion, ideally a video
- Environment — heat, spatter, coolant, washdown, cleanroom
- Anything that has already failed, and where
If you have a pack that keeps failing at the same point, that is often the most useful information of all. See why robot cables fail.
What this is not
This is not a configurator. Becker does not publish one, and a design conversation takes longer than picking a part number. If your cell is standard and you know what you need, a catalogue system may be the better buy — we say so on the supplier comparison.
