Blending

Blending is the rounding of the corners of a motion path. Blending ensures a continuous transition of the path and the path speed toward the next path segment. Blending protects the mechanical components and reduces cycle time. Without blending, the kinematic model would stop at the target pose and then start its motion toward the next target point.

Blending starts as soon as the tool is close enough to the current target pose. For each path segment, the SRL program defines the distance (blending distance) from one path segment to the next. However, this blending distance is limited to a percentage of the segment length on which blending is performed. The default value for this limiting percentage is 50%. However, the value can be increased to up to 99%.

This means the actual blending distance (blending distance_effective) results from the smaller value (minimum) of the two variables, limited by the remaining distance if the new path segment is taken over late (e.g. because of a wait point).

[1]	Linear segment to the first target position
[2]	Target position of the second linear segment
[3]	Set blending distanceTARGET
[4]	Segment length * limitation percentage
[5]	Blending distanceeffective
[6]	Resulting symmetrical blending arc