The “joint” of the robot – the reducer

The “joint” of the reducer robot is an intermediate device that connects the servo motor and the actuator. The reducer converts the power of the servo motor at high speed into the mechanical motion of low speed and high torque through the gear meshing to the actuator, and plays the role of matching the speed and transferring the torque. The output speed, transmission accuracy and output torque of the reducer determine the operating speed, positioning accuracy and carrying capacity of the corresponding movement shaft. In general, each joint of the industrial robot needs to be matched with a reducer, industrial robots are mostly six axes, so generally an industrial robot needs six speed reducers.

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The reducer can be divided into harmonic reducer and RV reducer, harmonic reducer is simple to use, high precision, but the structure is not as rigid as the RV reducer, Japan Hamonalco is the world’s largest harmonic reducer manufacturer; RV reducer structure rigidity is good, the output torque is large, but its internal structure is more complex, high manufacturing cost, transmission accuracy is slightly low, Japan Nabotsk for the world’s largest RV reducer manufacturer.

Industrial robot enterprise reducer self-production degree is low, most of them are purchased. According to the “China Robot Industry Development Report” released by HIT in 2021, Japan’s Hamanaco, Nabotsk and Sumitomo accounted for 85% of the share, of which Nabotsk is the inventor of the RV reducer, accounting for 60% of the global industrial robot reducer market. And in the CNC machine tool automatic tool change (ATC) device RV reducer market accounted for 80%, the four major families of industrial robots reducer self-production capacity is weak, all purchased Nabotsk reducer. Japan Hamenaco is the world’s first research and development and production of harmonic reducer enterprises, reducer market accounted for the second 15%.