In an academic exercise with a 7 axis robot we started by taking some long exposure pictures of tool paths. With a light mounted on the end of the robot arm in order to explored the robotic kinematic.

 

For this purpose we decided that we would draw contours of a sphere, this to reveal the volume the robot can reach depending on tool orientation. Ih the tool orientation is the center of sphere the kinematic of the robot is much more accentuated then if the tool orientation is the x axis. This means that radius of the sphere is larger when the orientation is the x axis. The next step was to integrate customs commands in to the movement code of the robot. These can used to connect to Arduino or control valves and 24V circuits.

Light drawing 1

Light drawing 2

Light drawing 3