Hello,
We have a KRC4 working with a KR10 KR1100 sixx, and now we are looking for a solution for the robot to work together with servos from other brands, synchronized.
We will be having servos for varying purposed, such as:
1) Controlling small gripper’s position
2) Controlling a gimbal that’s adjusts the toolset
3) Moving the robot on a linear track
As such, we will be needing servos of varying sizes and powers. We were looking at Yaskawa’s servos at first, because it has the smallest servo that will serve the purpose of (1).
We then started surveying for ways for the KRC to operate with the Yaskawa servos, and things aren’t looking optimistic. We at first considered using EtherCAT as a means to link them up together, but many of the ideas we had ended up hitting dead ends.
I’m still dabbing into EtherCAT myself, and I might be missing something here and there. Nonetheless, there are some ideas we had thought of:
Solution 1: KRC EtherCAT Master controlling Yaskawa Servo Driver Slaves
Most of Yaskawa’s drivers can handle EtherCAT (CoE). While KRC has an internal EtherCAT network of its own, apparently it uses its own in-house protocol. Further yet, according to others, KRC doesn’t support drive profile, so it doesn’t know the correct data to send to these drivers.
Solution 2: KRC EtherCAT Master & Yaskawa Motion Controller Master connected through Master-Master Bridge
This is the method recommended by Kuka, utilizing the Beckhoff module EL6692. Problem is, most of Yaskawa’s Controllers can’t be configured as EtherCAT masters (though configurations to EtherCAT slaves are possible).
Solution 3: KRC EtherCAT Master & Yaskawa Motion Controller Slave
If Yaskawa’s Controller is configured as a Slave, it will accept data by the Standard EtherCAT. This still shares the problem with Solution 1 on KRC’s capability as an EtherCAT master, though.
Solution 4: Workstation PC Master, KRC Slave & Yaskawa Motion Controller Slave
It seems that KRC can only be a slave with the VARAN EtherCAT protocol. This also means we need a full-fledge EtherCAT Master app on our Workstation PC.
There’s also the option of Digital IO. The KRC and Yaskawa Controller can then at least communicate through binary trigger signals. But this will mean a lot of circuit work (we don’t have our own electronic engineer, after all). Plus altering topology is very likely for this system’s application, and we thought EtherCAT is better suited for this than wiring new circuits for each topology.
I’m hearing from both Kuka and Yaskawa that having KRC working with Yaskawa servos is nontrivial because these two follow different standards (European vs. Japanese). Is any of these aforementioned solutions still possible? Or am I better off switching to another brands servo (such as Siemens)?
Thank you,
Ingrid