Extension Cables for Universal Robot

matthewd92

We are working on a customer project for 3 robots running presses in a consecutive fashion.  Because the presses are not close enough to each other to hand the parts from robot to robot we are using linear slides between each of the robots and the human who stands on each end.  One of the challenges that we faced was how to route all of the cabling so that die carts could be wheeled between each of the presses to remove and install the dies.  As we have a separate control cabinet for all of our IO wiring and external safety controller we are using Turck junction blocks at each of the robots to facilitate easy IO installation and we have the robot controllers mounted to the control cabinet (excuse the clutter, we are still installing the robots)  

We are running the cables behind the presses and then under the press to each of the robots.  This caused us to have an issue where the first two robots in the cell which are the furthest away did not have enough cable on the umbilicals to route correctly back to the controllers so we needed to make up some extension cables from the controller to the cabinet.

I had to do some research on what components to use and thought that I would maybe make someone else's life easier and supply a list of the items that we had to use to get the cables made and working.  All of the materials below were sourced from Automation Direct.

Female end of the cable (attaches to the robot umbilical)
   Housing - ZP-MC03A-2-SSE11M
   Insert - ZP-MC03A-1-FC005
   Crimp Terminal - ZP-MC-CC-F16A-18 (We used 18 GA twisted pair control wire)

Male end of the cable (Attaches to the robot control cabinet)
  Housing - ZP-MC03A-2-SCP11M
  Insert -  ZP-MC03A-1-MC005
  Crimp Terminal - ZP-MC-CC-M16A-18 (We used 18 GA twisted pair control wire)

Other Items Needed
  Control wire - PLTC3-18-2SS-100
  Cable Gland - BMX-13-W
  Crimping Tool - ZP-MC-CT2

Hope this helps anyone who needs to extend the umbilical cable on a UR3, UR5 or UR10

dahonora

Hello @matthewd92!
Could you please tell me how long was the extension for the umbilical cable you were working with? Did you ever experienced communication loss?

Thank you for sharing this! 
We are working on an application with the same distance problem.

matthewd92

@dahonora it was around 25' to 30' (8-10 m) and we didn't have any issues with communication loss.  RS-485 which is I believe the communication protocol on the arm has a max length of 40' with 10 Mbps speed but 4000' is the max length.  Not sure where you would start to see issues as I am not sure what speed the arm communication is taking place.

dahonora

Thank you for the feedback!

matthewd92

You’re welcome 

dahonora

BTW, anyone with experience extending the cable of a E-series? I understand that the cable goes directly to the robot, without a connector like in the CB version. How do you proceed in this case?

matthewd92

There is still a connector, it's just different than the CB3 connector.

dahonora

I attached a picture from the bottom side of the UR10e we are using. As you can see, the cable enters inside the robot base. I also attached a picture of a UR10 we were using before. As you can see the connections are different. I don't really understand how are you suggesting to change the cable.