How should I add a 7th axis rotary table and spindle to a kr100 with KRC1A

    I would like to add a rotary table and spindle to my KR100p/2 with KRC1A. I have not purchased the table or spindle yet, and the control does not have drives in it for either. Just looking for advice and Do's and don'ts before I dive in. Any direction/advice would be appreciated. :justice: Thanks.

    A spindle probably won't be too hard, as long as you obtain one that's amenable to control via Fieldbus I/O (probably DeviceNet, that's the best-supported bus on the KRC1s).

    A turntable... well, that could get complicated. The easiest approach would be if you use a simple indexing table -- it simply rotates to a certain angle and holds position while the robot performs milling operations. If you want to have realtime synchronous motion between your robot and the rotary table, that's going to require some very specific hardware, which might be a bit hard to find for a controller that old. Not impossible, but not easy, either.

    A stepper could do, but the issue there is if the motor slips or stalls at all, you won't know it. At minimum, you want some kind of "zeroing" sensor that will allow you to check the stepper motor periodically, but even that's slightly risky (a high-torque stepper driving a low-torque load can reduce that risk, as seen in most desktop 3D printers).

    What you want is some sort of self-contained rotary positioner that can accept commands over standard I/O, and (ideally) return accurate position data. As I said above, a good stepper motor setup could serve -- you can bit-bang a stepper using program code, a DeviceNet output card, and some solid-state relays if need be.

    Scratch that last idea. I think what I will do is operate it with pneumatics and hard position stops to maintain absolute positions. I am not familiar with the I/O of this type of control or "device net". I am familiar with Fanuc's IO. How do I wire in and code solenoids to this system? I'm sure with a lot of research I'll figure it out, :wallbash: but you guys probably know off the top of your head. Anyone feel like being my hero? Thanks for the help.

    DeviceNet is the only Fieldbus that the KRC1 came with built-in support for. For any other I/O types (except RS232), you'll need to buy a KUKA adapter card, which could be hard to find for a robot that old. Also, DeviceNet is pretty easy.

    You'll need to look at the files IOSYS.INI and DEVNET.INI in the robot's KRC/INI directory. There's a *lot* of discussion of setting up DevNet in the forum archives.

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