About
About Citizen Robot
An industrial arm read as a promise about position: six joints arranged so a tool returns to the same point in space, and every entry is one thing that keeps or breaks that promise.
The six-axis arm is the most widely installed general-purpose machine in manufacturing and one of the least explained. It is usually described either as a marvel or as a threat. It is neither: it is a positioning device with six degrees of freedom, a controller that solves geometry, and a set of tolerances that hold under stated conditions and not others.
How the entries are written
Every entry states the tolerance it turns on — a repeatability figure, a payload, a reach, a cycle — so claims can be compared rather than admired. Where a published number excludes something, the entry says what it excludes. Where two things are routinely confused, the entry separates them and says which one governs.
What this is not
There are no products here, no prices and no recommendations. Manufacturers are not named where naming them would turn an explanation into a comparison. Photographs are of real installations and real components; the captions say what the picture cannot.
The six sections
- Repeatability — Returning to the same point, not the right one.
- Six Axes — What each joint contributes, and why six.
- The Pendant — How a path actually gets recorded.
- The Hand — Holding something you cannot feel.
- Singularity — Where the maths runs out.
- The Cell — The fence, and what it is really for.