Cartesian arms
An arm built from three straight slides at right angles — the gantry over a pallet station or the XYZ stage on a lab bench — for big, box-shaped workspaces.
- gantry robot
- linear robot
- XYZ robot
- cartesian robot
No products in this category yet.
What it is
A Cartesian arm moves its tool along three linear axes, X, Y and Z, so every position is just three distances. No rotary joints flex, so the structure is stiff, payload scales with the frame, and the workspace is a rectangle as large as you care to build. The trade is bulk and orientation: the frame surrounds the whole workspace, it cannot reach around anything, and tilting the tool needs extra wrist axes.
People call it a gantry robot, linear robot, XYZ robot or Cartesian robot; a gantry is the overhead version on two legs. In this taxonomy it sits under Arm, and the test is that the three main axes are prismatic — sliding, not turning. A rotary base with two slides is cylindrical; two rotary joints and one slide is SCARA.
What they are used for
- Palletising and depalletising — overhead gantries stacking heavy boxes and sacks across a floor area too wide for an articulated arm.
- Machine loading over long lines — a linear robot travelling above a row of machine tools or moulders to load and unload them.
- Lab automation and dispensing — benchtop XYZ stages moving pipettes, probes or nozzles over plates and trays.
- Storage and retrieval — gantry pickers working over grids of bins.
What to compare
| Attribute | Why it matters | In this catalogue |
|---|---|---|
reach |
Travel on each axis; the workspace is the box they define | not yet in the catalogue |
payload |
Scales with frame size; large gantries carry more than most serial arms | not yet in the catalogue |
repeatability |
High, because linear guides do not flex the way joint chains do | not yet in the catalogue |
axes |
Three is the minimum; wrist axes at the tool raise it | not yet in the catalogue |
mounting |
Floor-standing frame, overhead gantry or benchtop | not yet in the catalogue |
sdk |
Many are integrator-built and PLC-driven; check for an open interface | not yet in the catalogue |
In the catalogue
No products yet — this is where overhead gantry palletisers, linear machine-tending robots and benchtop XYZ stages would go.
Edge cases
- An articulated arm on a linear track: an articulated arm; the track is an extra axis.
- 3D printers, CNC routers and pick-and-place machines: Cartesian in geometry, but sold as machines, not robots.
- A single linear axis sold alone: a Linear actuator component.
- One rotary axis plus two slides: cylindrical.
Related
Arm · Articulated arm · SCARA arm · Parallel arm · Cylindrical & spherical arm · Linear actuator
Rule of membership
Three prismatic (linear) main axes.
Category rb-1-4 in the whatrobot taxonomy.