Cincinnati Milacron T3-786 Robotic Arm and Control

The Cincinnati Milacron T3-786 robot was the workhorse of the robotics industry for many years. Almost indestructible, thousands of these machines are still in production in hostile, 24 hour manufacturing environments. Many manufacturers have come to depend on these machines, and are reluctant to give them up. At Cincinnati Milacron Corporation, Richard Hohn developed the robot called The Tomorrow Tool or T3. Released in 1973, the T3 was the first commercially available industrial robot controlled by a microcomputer as well as the first U.S. robot to use the revolute configuration. This robot is a more classically designed industrial robot. Designed as a healthy compromise between dexterity and strength this robot was one of the ground breakers, in terms of success, in factory environments. The Cincinnati Milacron T3 robot is an example of jointed arm robot which most closely resembles the human arm. This type of arm consists of several rigid members connected by rotary joints. In some robots, these members are analogous to the human upper arm, forearm and hand; the joints are analogous to the human shoulder, elbow and wrist. The T3 robot arm is mounted on a rotary joint whose major axis is perpendicular to the robot mounting plate. This axis is known as the base or waist. Three axes are required to emulate the movement of the wrist: pitch, yaw and roll.