End Effector
Assembly Line
How a wiring robot came to solve the electrical function integration challenge
Q5D launched its first 5-axis CNC additive manufacturing robot cell, the CY1000 in 2023. Designed to automate the difficult task of adding electrical connections to increasingly complex products, the self-contained CY1000 robot eliminates the need for expensive, bulky, and heavy wiring harnesses. Freelance technical writer and journalist, Robert Huntley caught up with Chris Elsworthy, Chief Technology Officer at Q5D’s Bristol, UK headquarters to talk about the company’s vision and some of the challenges it overcame to bring the robot to market.
Our software is in three parts. We have the embedded software that the FPGA runs, which is all the real-time maths and stuff. The Pi is running the machine’s firmware, taking all the G-Code instructions, and passing them to the FPGA. And then, on top of that, we had the GUI, which is the interface between the human and what instructions get sent to the Raspberry Pi. We chose Raspberry Pi because of the value of it. Our original boards had microcontrollers, USB and HDMI connectors, and everything you could ever need to plug into a wider world, but it cost us thousands of pounds to develop that. Whereas the Raspberry Pi is £90, you get all that built-in, it’s all tested, and there’s a wealth of information on the net about how to use it, so it was a much easier way for us to optimize and develop.