In industrial automation and robotics, cables must supply excellent, long-lasting performance, remain unaltered for their entire lifecycle and perfectly withstand repeated mechanical bending and torsion stress. For this reason, the TECNIKABEL automation test room is equipped with a continuous data acquisition system connected to moving cables, several chains of various length, a torsion test machine, a robot arm simulator and a simulator with robot wrist.
The data acquisition system, developed in LabVIEW environment, acquires the electrical resistance of cables in real time and calculates trends according to the number of cycles of the machine on which they are installed. This system checks if conductors are damaged leading to final failure of cable. Test data are stored in a large database for easy retrieval and access. The system, which can be accessed via Intranet and Internet using specific passwords, will soon be integrated with video cameras connected to the web.
