Effects of drill end effector's mounted method on the robot performance

The flexible robot drilling system consists of two main sub-systems, the robot and the multifunction drilling end effector. It is more and more widely used in aircraft industry in recent years. There are three different methods to attach the end effector to the robot, i.e. coaxial type, hanging type and side type. The robot and workpiece simulation models are constructed by using software Matlab. According to the three different mounting methods, the robot reachability, manipulability, joint usage degree and joint passive torque are calculated by means of Matlab language. Based on the calculation results and evaluation indexes, the performances including reachability, manipulability, joint usage degree and hole positioning accuracy of the robot are analyzed. The analysis results show that the coaxial mounting eliminates the fifth axis joint passive torque produced by the clamp force, thus improving the hole positioning accuracy; the hanging mounting increases the robot reachability; the side mounting improves the robot manipulability and decreases the joint usage degree.