Yaskawa PA3050HB: A Seven-Axis Paint Robot With 3,050 mm Reach

On 7 October 2026 Yaskawa Electric began selling the MOTOMAN-PA3050HB, a seven-axis painting robot rated at 15 kg wrist payload and 3,050 mm maximum reach. The target work is large: automotive bodies, bumpers and similar panels that a six-axis robot finds awkward to paint both close to its own base and deep inside a booth, because a longer arm that solves the far side of the part starts crowding the booth wall behind the robot.

Yaskawa did not solve that by simply stretching the forearm. The seventh axis is a bend added to the upper arm, and the S and L axes are offset by 500 mm. The painting controller is the YRC1000, which Yaskawa says can drive paint flow, electrostatic voltage and air settings directly from the robot program. Below is what the published specification actually says, where the new machine departs from the MPX3500 it sits beside, and which numbers are still missing.

Key takeaways

• What went on sale: the MOTOMAN-PA3050HB, a seven-axis painting robot, released in Japan on 7 October 2026 at an open price.
• Core specification: 15 kg wrist payload, 3,050 mm reach, 0.15 mm repeatability, 600 kg mass, 3.0 kVA, floor or 25 degree tilt mounting only.
• The seventh axis is a bend in the upper arm plus a 500 mm offset between the S and L axes, not a linear track.
• Three payload numbers: 15 kg at the wrist, but only 5 kg on the U arm and 5 kg on the M arm for hoses and paint hardware.
• Controller change: the PA3050HB runs the painting version of the YRC1000, where the MPX3500 runs the DX200.
• Narrower fit than the MPX3500: no wall or ceiling mounting, and explosion-proof approval listed only for TIIS and FM.

What Yaskawa announced, in numbers

The release is a Japanese domestic launch, and the product page carries a complete specification table. That table is the useful part, because the headline numbers hide several limits that decide whether the robot fits a given booth.

The reach is a class claim, not a record

Yaskawa describes 3,050 mm as the largest class of reach among painting robots, and that wording is worth reading carefully. Kawasaki lists 3,100 mm for its wall-mounted KJ314, so 3,050 mm is not the absolute longest reach on the market. It is a class claim, and the practical comparison is inside Yaskawa's own painting range: the MPX3500 reaches 2,700 mm.

Seven axes is not new in painting either. FANUC America describes its P-1000iA as a pedestal-based seven-axis paint robot, and the Kawasaki KJ314 is a seven-axis wall-mounted paint machine. What differs between these machines is where the extra axis sits and what that position does for the booth, which is the part a layout engineer should be comparing.

Why the seventh axis sits in the upper arm

Yaskawa explains the design problem in the release. A six-axis robot long enough to reach the far side of a car body also has a long arm, and that long arm makes it hard to hold a sensible painting posture on the side of the part nearest the robot. The rear of the arm also risks hitting the booth wall. Adding an axis is one way out, but a conventional seven-axis layout makes the machine harder to operate.

The PA3050HB takes a different route. A bending axis, the E axis, is inserted in the upper arm, and the first two axes are offset by 500 mm. Yaskawa says the arm lengths were balanced so the robot keeps the operability of a six-axis structure while the extra axis lets the arm change shape. In practice that means the robot can fold over the near side of a body panel and tuck its elbow away from the booth wall without moving the base further back.

Two mechanical types are offered, standard and mirror, so a booth can be laid out left and right. Yaskawa also says programme data can be shared between mirrored machines more easily, which matters on a two-robot booth where both sides paint the same body. A pressurised chamber inside the arm can carry paint equipment such as solenoid valves, and the robot is designed to keep a slim profile so the booth itself can be smaller.

What the extra 350 mm buys, and what it costs

Compared with the MPX3500, reach grows by 350 mm, or 13 percent. If you treat the working envelope as a circle at full extension, the covered area grows by about 28 percent, from roughly 22.9 to 29.2 square metres. That arithmetic is only a planning aid: film build, bell orientation and the approach angle to the panel decide what is actually paintable, and no manufacturer publishes a usable coverage map in a release.

Two rows in that table matter more than the reach. First, the MPX3500 carries 25 kg on the U arm and can house a pump axis and paint control equipment inside the arm; the PA3050HB publishes 5 kg on the U arm and 5 kg on the M arm. Any line that mounts a pump, a large valve manifold or a heavy hose package on the arm cannot assume the new robot is a drop-in replacement. Second, the MPX3500 mounts on the floor, ceiling, wall or a shelf, while the PA3050HB is floor or tilt only. A cell built around a wall-mounted MPX3500 has no direct upgrade path to this machine without rebuilding the structure.

Payload is three numbers, not one

The 15 kg figure applies to the wrist. The arm allowances are separate, and the specification footnote says the mounted mass depends on the wrist and arm correlated masses. For a paint robot the wrist load is usually the bell atomizer, its shaping air block and the paint and solvent lines; the arm load is the part of the hose bundle and valving that rides behind the wrist.

Those CoG figures are static arithmetic at 15 kg and 9.81 m/s2. They are useful for a first sanity check, not for sign-off: allowable moments are also consumed by acceleration, and a bell atomizer with a long stack can sit close to the B axis limit even when its mass is well inside 15 kg. The T axis figure is the one that looks tight, but a rotary bell is normally centred on the T axis, so the practical risk is an off-centre valve block or an unbalanced hose pull rather than the atomizer itself.

What the YRC1000 changes in the paint cell

Yaskawa says paint conditions, including discharge rate, high voltage and air settings, can be controlled directly from the robot program. On a conventional line those values are often handed from a PLC or a separate paint controller, which means extra analogue or fieldbus signals, extra recipe tables and an extra place for a mismatch to hide when a colour change goes wrong.

Moving the recipe into the robot program can shorten commissioning and make a colour or bell change part of the same program as the path. It also concentrates process knowledge in the robot backup, which is good for repeatability and bad if the backup discipline is weak. None of this is free: the controller family changes from the DX200 used on the MPX3500 to the YRC1000, so the teach pendant, the spare controller modules, the training and probably the program conversion all change with the robot.

Yaskawa does not publish which atomizer and paint-supply vendors are supported, how many paint channels the painting YRC1000 can drive, or whether existing DX200 programs port across. Those are questions for the integrator, not for a data sheet.

Booth layout, mass and the CO2 claim

Yaskawa links the long reach and the folding arm to a smaller paint booth, and from there to lower energy use for booth air conditioning and lower running cost, including lower CO2 emissions. The logic is sound: a smaller booth moves less conditioned air. The release gives no numbers for booth volume, air flow, energy or CO2, so treat the environmental benefit as directional until an integrator models the actual cell.

Two physical numbers are fixed. Power capacity is 3.0 kVA, the same as the MPX3500, so the electrical supply to the robot does not need to grow. Mass is 600 kg against 590 kg, a 1.7 percent increase that is small in itself, but the 500 mm S-L offset moves the centre of gravity relative to the base, so the pedestal or floor anchor design should be checked rather than copied from an MPX3500 cell.

Five checks before you write one into a line

1. Mounting. Floor or tilt up to 25 degrees only. If the current cell hangs the robot from a ceiling frame or bolts it to a wall, this robot is not the replacement.
2. Certification by market. TIIS for Japan and FM for North America are listed. The MPX3500 also lists KCs for Korea and a Taiwanese approval; if the line is in either market, confirm the local approval in writing before specifying the PA3050HB.
3. Arm mass budget. 5 kg on the U arm and 5 kg on the M arm is a different budget from the 25 kg U arm of the MPX3500. Weigh the hose package, the valve manifold and any arm-mounted pump hardware before assuming a straight swap.
4. Controller migration. YRC1000 replaces DX200. Budget for pendant, training, spare modules and program conversion, and ask the integrator whether the existing paint recipes can be exported.
5. Wrist and base protection. IP65 equivalent at the wrist and IP4X at the base axes is normal for a paint robot, but solvent and cleaning chemistry still decide seal life. Ask what cleaning regime Yaskawa approves for the wrist.

What the release does not say

The gap between what is published and what a project needs is the most useful thing to map before a quotation.

The spares view: what changes on the shelf

For a plant, the PA3050HB is not only a new arm. It adds a second controller generation to a paint shop that may already run MPX3500 machines on DX200 controllers, and it keeps the same Sigma-series servo hardware philosophy underneath. That matters for spares because the drive and motor families are the parts that fail and get swapped, while the arm itself is a long-life item.

Our own Yaskawa coverage is concentrated on the Sigma families and the V1000 and A1000 drives rather than on complete robots. The table below is a practical starting point for the motion hardware around a Yaskawa robot cell; we do not stock the PA3050HB arm or the YRC1000 controller, and we will not pretend otherwise.

Smaller axes are covered too: the 750 W SGDV-5R5A01A Sigma-5 drive, the 400 W SGMAV-04ADA61 motor and the older SGDB-15ADG drive are all in our catalogue. The wider list sits in the Yaskawa brand archive, and the two relevant categories are servo drives and VFD drives. If the question is whether a specific Sigma drive can replace an obsolete one, the nameplate and the controller model decide it, not the wattage on the front of the old unit.

The same logic applies across the robot market. Yaskawa is also pushing AI into welding through its GAZOO Racing deployment, while KUKA is positioning its KAI platform and MIRO humanoid for a different kind of cell. On the motion side, the Omron C6 servo and the Nidec Commander S 11 kW extension show how quickly the drive tier changes underneath a robot arm.

Bottom line

The PA3050HB is a sensible answer to a real paint-booth problem: 3,050 mm of reach without a long, unwieldy forearm, and a seventh axis that folds rather than swings. The trade is narrower than the headline suggests. It mounts on the floor or a tilt only, carries less arm-mounted mass than the MPX3500, and is approved for TIIS and FM but not the wider set of markets its sibling covers.

If the cell is a new automotive body or bumper booth in Japan or North America, the PA3050HB is worth a layout study. If it is a wall-mounted legacy cell, or a line that carries pumps and heavy hose packages on the arm, the honest answer is to check the MPX3500 first and treat the new robot as a project, not a swap.

Frequently asked questions

What is the Yaskawa MOTOMAN-PA3050HB?

It is a seven-axis painting robot that Yaskawa began selling in Japan on 7 October 2026. It has a 15 kg wrist payload, a 5 kg U arm payload, a 5 kg M arm payload, 3,050 mm maximum reach, 0.15 mm repeatability and a 600 kg mass. It runs on the painting version of the YRC1000 controller and is aimed at automotive bodies, bumpers and other large panels. The price is listed as open price.

How is a seven-axis paint robot different from a six-axis one?

The seventh axis gives the arm an extra bend, so the robot can change the shape of its arm instead of only its position. On the PA3050HB that bend is in the upper arm, with the S and L axes offset by 500 mm. Yaskawa says this lets the robot hold a good painting posture on the near side of a body while keeping the rear of the arm clear of the booth wall, and that operability stays comparable to a six-axis structure.

Does the PA3050HB use the same controller as the MPX3500?

No. The PA3050HB uses the YRC1000 in its painting version. The MPX3500 uses the DX200 in its painting version. That changes the pendant, the controller spares, the training and probably the program conversion, even though both robots use Yaskawa Sigma-series servo hardware underneath.

Can the PA3050HB be wall mounted or ceiling mounted?

No. The specification lists floor mounting or a tilt up to 25 degrees only, and it explicitly excludes ceiling and wall mounting. The MPX3500 supports floor, ceiling, wall and shelf mounting, so a cell built around a wall or ceiling installation cannot swap to the PA3050HB without structural changes.

Is 3,050 mm the longest reach in painting robots?

Not on the published figures. Yaskawa describes 3,050 mm as the largest class for painting robots, but Kawasaki lists 3,100 mm for its KJ314. The number is a class claim rather than an absolute record, and the more useful comparison for most projects is against the 2,700 mm MPX3500 in the same Yaskawa range.

Can I buy spare parts for a Yaskawa paint robot from you?

We do not stock the PA3050HB arm or the YRC1000 controller. We do hold Yaskawa Sigma-series servo drives and motors plus V1000 and A1000 drives for the motion and booth hardware around a robot cell. Send the nameplate of the failed drive or motor, the robot model and the controller model and we will check the match and the realistic lead time.

Sources

• Yaskawa Electric, Japanese news release, new seven-axis large painting robot MOTOMAN-PA3050HB goes on sale, 7 October 2026.
• Yaskawa e-mechatronics, MOTOMAN-PA3050HB specification page, accessed 30 October 2026.
• Yaskawa e-mechatronics, MOTOMAN-MPX3500 specification page, accessed 30 October 2026.
• Kawasaki Robotics, KJ314 explosion-proof painting robot product page, accessed 30 October 2026.
• FANUC America, P-1000iA paint robot product page, accessed 30 October 2026.

Talk to us

If you are specifying a paint cell or keeping an older Motoman line running, send the robot model, the controller model, the axis that failed and the nameplate of the drive or motor. We will check compatible motion hardware and the realistic lead time. Contact our team.