A SCARA type direct-drive robot which can be used in the assembly operation of printed circuit boards was designed and manufactured with graphite fiber epoxy composite material. The optimum stacking angle of the graphite fiber which gives the minimum deflection of the composite robot arm was calculated by the energy method and the manufacturing method of the box-type cross section of the robot arm with composite materials was developed.

In order to compare the dynamic characteristics of the composite material robot arm with a conventional material robot arm, an aluminum robot arm which has the same dimensions and thickness of the composite robot arm was manufactured.

The static and dynamic characteristics of the composite material robot arm such as static deflection, natural frequency and damping as well as weight saving were considerably improved compared to those of the aluminum robot arm.

This paper presents at first a static and kinematic analysis of closed chains mechanisms which permits to deduce different possible fully parallel architectures. Then we focus on a particular parallel architecture with C5 links designed to perform precise assembly tasks. A general modeling of this C5 parallel robot is presented. Two typical assembly tasks in the automotive industry are also proposed; the first one uses the C5 links parallel robot as a left-hand device, while the second one uses it as the terminal tool of a sequential manipulator.