4 Axis spray gun holder

What material are you spraying? The first thing that popped into my head is maybe modifying one of the systems used in a car wash, that turns and swivels the water jets. Just a thought.

Some more questions: What is your definition of "low-cost"? What is your level of proficiency at building things? Can you build it from scratch or are you more looking to slightly modify an existing product?

Design engineer, large automated systems, 40 plus years of automaton. Low cost is less then 50K for robot, times two. We build everything in house, only use out side tool & die shops for some machining. This is all special equipment for one of a kind production use.

I keep envisioning that you're tyring to move and control an automotive-type spray gun on the end of an arm. Maybe it would help to consider ditching the gun and using a seperate pressure vessel for your applied material and just mount a spray valve?

Also, these two companies sell pre-fab 4-axis systems to among other things selectively spray and/or needle-dispense a conformal coating onto circuit boards (don't let the pictures fool you - they can do a fine spray, not just squirt). If you'll talk to them in more detail about what you want to do they may be able to help.

http://www.pva.net/PVA.htm

http://www.nordson.com/en-us/divisions/asymtek/pages/default.aspx

Dear Guest, these units are similar to the ones offered by IAI. nice little unit but does not give the range of motion needed. If you can envision what your wrist can do in its movement about an axis, this is about what needs to happen with gun. I can not go in to details for obvious reasons, but it is looking to be a fun build.

Have you looked into Agricultural options like:

http://www.sprayingequipmentsupply.com/

http://www.teejet.com/

http://www.sprayparts4less.com

Well the simplest and cheapest method will be to hire four painters that speak your language. This way you will only have to point at the object that you wish painted. You will have to tell them what color and finish you want. This maybe the only requirement that language is necessary. These painters though will naturally bring with them some knowledge base on the craft of painting, such as what primers to use, how long between coats, how thick of a coat, the proper viscosity for paint to be sprayed, spray gun malfunction and any masking that will be required. Actually with the small motion you're proposing you might be able to get away with just two painters or even one well skilled painter.

Now if you insist on assembling a robotic machine that will only handle the mechanical motion, you will have to automate all of the quality control factors that your painter would have brought to your project in some additional quality control system. To properly move the spray gun in the four axes of motion, you must clearly define the axes of motion. One of the critical parameters for each axis of motion is the length of travel. There are many more critical parameters. A partial list of other parameters are velocity, acceleration, precision and mechanical loads (paint mass and/or hosing may change this). Once all of these are known then an arm or table assembly can be selected. This will now lead to deciding what intelligent system will control this machine. I suspect that a single PLC will be sufficient but you will have to learn how to program this to control the motions of object and paint sprayer. Oh, don't forget you will have to also include some automated mechanism to bring your object to this machine with proper alignment and precision to do this painting.

Oops, you asked for four axis of motion not four spray guns, hire one painter or contract an automation engineer.

You need to answerer some questions like, is what your spraying moving on a production line or stationary? If it's stationary does it revolve? What is the material (metal,plastic)? And is this an ongoing high volume project? I used to build automatic spray & drying plant for the model car industry & we built machines where the models past by on jigs through 4,5 or 6 guns at different angles whilst rotating, or some where the parts were on spigot rods that hung from a conveyor that turned in front of 3 guns that were on a vertical track that went up & down & followed the progress of the conveyor before returning to the next rod, another type was still a vertical one but it had a spinning gun holder so the components passed through a fog,another type used electrostatic guns these saved a great deal of paint and had the added bonus of low air pressure so therefor less compressor time.

What guns are you using? they seem heavy for auto guns, we used Bullows guns which weighed about ½lb each.

Bazzer

Bazzer, I can't go into a lot of details. The process is high speed at 250 ft min. lineal. I have several guns involved in spraying 2K component materials. The two moveable units are applying a highlighter to the substrate. Hence the movement needed has to be precise. Can't say more then that.

Spraying high speed production parts is not new to me. Most of our equipment runs at 300 400 ft min., while using several types of coatings. On several different productions lines coating a variety of different materials.

I just do not want to spend 100K for a robots. So I will make equipment to do the job. I have a vast knowledge base as stated earlier. Making this type of equipment is not new to me. By, the way I did find materials I was looking for from Nook.