Maximum payload has also increased, going from 100 to 300 lb, thanks to beefed-up components‚ including the chassis, bearings, and steel-reinforced polyurethane belts.
The new actuator uses Bell-Everman’s dual-belt arrangement in which the lower static belt is adhesively bonded to the chassis and meshed with the upper dynamic belt. A motor-driven pinion riding between the two belts drives the carriage, acting more like a rack and pinion than a traditional belt drive.
Only a small portion of the upper belt is under load at any given carriage position, making the actuator stiffer and more accurate than traditional belt drives. For example, SBH provides a unidirectional positioning accuracy of ±12 μm at speeds up to 13 fps. Dynamic belt life is 5 million cycles at 1,334 N.
With a chassis based on standard aluminum extrusions, SBH can be engineered for travel distances up to 164 ft. A single SBH axis can also support several independently moving carriages.
Applications for the heavy-duty drive include packaging, laser cutting and welding, industrial fabrication, wet-bench systems, and material handling. Multiaxis configurations include Cartesian motion systems and gantry robots.
