1. The three content categories
Every article on Robotics Engineering Lab belongs to exactly one of the following categories. The category determines how much weight the page can carry in an engineering decision.
Worked examples
Arduino and ESP32 sketches, wiring procedures, kinematics derivations, and the two browser calculators. These are written to be reproduced. Code published here has been compiled, and any worked number shown in the text was produced by the formula printed alongside it. If you follow the steps with the stated parts, you should reach the stated result.
Engineering explainers
Safeguarding, materials, transmissions, grippers, cooling, cable management and similar topics. These synthesise published standards and documented manufacturer practice into design guidance. They are educational. They are not a risk assessment, a certification, or a substitute for a qualified integrator. Where an explainer touches a safety function, it points to the governing standard rather than paraphrasing it as if it were the requirement itself.
Specification notes
Pages covering FANUC, ABB, KUKA, Universal Robots, Standard Bots and comparable industrial hardware. Values are transcribed from the manufacturer’s own product documentation, with the access date recorded in the page. We do not own these machines and have not bench-tested them. No page in this category should be read as an independent review, and none of them is a substitute for the current datasheet or a written quotation.
2. Sourcing rules
- Hardware figures come from the manufacturer’s current product page or datasheet, not from resellers, aggregators or other blogs.
- Safety requirements are attributed to the governing document — ISO 10218, ANSI/RIA R15.06, CSA Z434, IEC 61496 — and readers are told to obtain the current edition. Standards are revised; an article summary is never authoritative.
- Where a widely repeated figure is wrong, we name it and explain why rather than silently omitting it. Several specification notes on this site explicitly flag incorrect payload, reach, cycle-time and MTBF numbers that circulate in aggregated content.
- Prices are treated as indicative only. We do not publish a single “street price” for industrial equipment that is always quoted per configuration.
- Calculations shown on the site state their assumptions. If an assumption is not stated, treat the result as unusable.
3. Images and diagrams
Photographs of industrial equipment are editorial illustrations unless the caption identifies a specific machine. Diagrams are conceptual: they show relationships and sequence, not dimensioned geometry. Neither is a substitute for a drawing package, a layout study, or a safety review of your actual cell.
4. What this site cannot do for you
- It cannot approve a robot cell. Only a risk assessment carried out for your installation can do that.
- It cannot confirm that a specific robot fits your part. The load diagram, wrist moment and inertia limits in the manufacturer’s documentation govern that, not a headline payload figure.
- It cannot tell you what a machine will cost. Request an itemised quotation covering arm, controller, tooling, guarding, integration, training and service.
- It cannot replace the manufacturer’s current documentation, which changes without notice.
5. Corrections policy
Errors are corrected on the published page rather than quietly deleted, and the modified date is updated when a substantive change is made. To report one, email contact@roboticsengineeringlab.com naming the page, or use the contact form and choose “Tutorial correction”. Readers who report an error are credited on request.
6. Advertising and independence
No manufacturer pays for coverage here. There are no sponsored placements and no paid product endorsements. Display advertising through Google AdSense, where it runs, is served by Google; advertisers have no input into which hardware is covered, how it is assessed, or what any specification says. Cookie and advertising details are in the Privacy Policy.
7. Who is responsible
Pages are written and edited by Marcus Chen, who is responsible for the accuracy of the technical content and for keeping specification notes labelled as such. Questions about a specific page should name that page so the source used can be re-checked.