Motion Index Drives had the opportunity to work with Fleetwood Metal Industries who were in need of a 7th axis rotary index table that has the capability of being the 7th axis to a Nachi spot weld robot. The Nachi servo motor was coupled to the high precision TMF1000 rotary index drive and will be programmed through a Nachi Robot teach pendent and will communicated directly with the Robot.
In addition to providing the 7th Axis rotary index table, Motion Index Drives provided a custom-assembled MX230-02 Slip Ring and Air Union to enable Fleetwood Metals to bring power, communication and air to the four fixtures that will be mounted to the rotary index table tool plate. The slip ring is beneficial in sending signals to the tooling fixtures on the device to automate fixtures as opposed to a more manual operation that would require the operator to manually close and open clamps during loading and unloading.
When slip rings were first introduced into automation processes many years ago, they were expensive, difficult to maintain and made of hazardous material such as mercury. Electrical slip rings are a requirement for a lot of automation applications in many different industries around the world that require the ability to provide communication and power to fixtures on rotary index tables that continuously rotate in one direction.
Motion Index Drives offers an extensive lines of standard slip rings that can be added to any our rotary index tables from our small RT100 series all the way up to our TMF8000 rotary index drive. Our slip rings have also been utilized on our TR series of weld positioners. The standard line of MX series rotary slip rings come in fully connectorized with plug in connectors, to the basic flying lead type that requires the customer to hard wire each lead separately. The MX230 series provides the customer with a plug in communication pre-wired connectors such as Ethernet, DeviceNet, Profibus, ProfiNet and Canbus. Each circuit in our slip rings is gold plated to allow for non-hazardous production and provide high conductivity properties. Our slip rings can operate high amperage 480 volt three phase power.
