Cylindrical & spherical arms
An arm that turns on its base, lifts straight up and slides straight out — the oldest industrial layout, now mostly moving wafers and loading machines.
- polar robot
- spherical robot
- cylindrical robot
- polar arm
No products in this category yet.
What it is
A cylindrical arm has a rotary base, a vertical slide for height and a horizontal slide for reach, so its workspace is a hollow cylinder around the base. Replace the vertical slide with a tilting joint and the workspace becomes a sphere: that is the polar or spherical arm, the shape of the first industrial robots. Both trade flexibility for simplicity: linear reach makes control easy and the arm stiff and quick in and out of a machine, but it cannot reach around obstacles and needs a clear ring of space to swing through.
Also called a cylindrical, polar or spherical robot. In this taxonomy it sits under Arm, and the test is a rotary base combined with prismatic lift and reach axes. Three slides and no rotary base is Cartesian; two vertical rotary joints and a slide is SCARA.
What they are used for
- Wafer and substrate handling — the reach-in, lift-out motion suits moving silicon wafers between cassettes and process chambers.
- Machine tending — loading presses, lathes and die-casting machines through a door in front of the arm.
- Welding and transfer — the historical use on car body lines, before articulated arms took over.
- Teaching — a simple chain for introducing inverse kinematics.
What to compare
| Attribute | Why it matters | In this catalogue |
|---|---|---|
reach |
Horizontal stroke plus vertical travel define the cylinder | not yet in the catalogue |
payload |
Stiff linear axes let it carry more than an articulated arm of similar size | not yet in the catalogue |
axes |
Three main axes; a wrist adds more | not yet in the catalogue |
repeatability |
High on the linear axes, limited by the base rotation | not yet in the catalogue |
mounting |
Floor or inside a machine enclosure | not yet in the catalogue |
ip_rating |
Clean-room and machine-shop versions differ a lot | not yet in the catalogue |
In the catalogue
No products yet — this is where wafer-handling robots, cylindrical machine-loading arms and classic polar-geometry industrial arms would go.
Edge cases
- Polar and spherical arms: here; a tilting shoulder replaces the vertical slide.
- SCARA: two vertical rotary joints and a slide — not cylindrical, though both swing horizontally.
- A telescoping arm on a turntable sold as a crane or loader: here only if programmable.
- An articulated arm on a rotating base: articulated; the base is its first joint.
Related
Arm · Articulated arm · SCARA arm · Parallel arm · Cartesian arm
Rule of membership
Rotary base combined with a prismatic reach axis; the second axis is either a prismatic lift (cylindrical) or a rotary tilt (spherical / polar).
Category rb-1-5 in the whatrobot taxonomy.