Dear Friends,
I am working on teach pendant development for a robot. I had a requirement that one teach pendant has to be used for multiple robots and ones robot is programmed then same teach pendant can be disconnected and used for other robot.
I had a query,
1. Is it possible to run the robot without teach pendant?
2. Is this a standard feature with all the robot manufacturers teach pendant?
Regards
Sachin
Detachable Teach Pendant
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scgorlewar -
January 18, 2017 at 11:45 AM -
Thread is marked as Resolved.
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KUKA KRC4s can do this. I'm afraid I can't speak to any other brands, although as of a few years ago, I don't think any brand had it -- the technology to make it possible wasn't yet certified.
The trick is that each pendant is required (by safety regulations) to have an E-Stop and other safety-rated interlocks on board. Dynamically removing and adding them to/from a robot's safety circuit (which is held to very tight standards, for obvious reasons) is not an easy thing to with 99.9999% reliability.
This isn't the first time I've seen this tried -- Kawasaki once had "mini pendants", which were smaller and cheaper than the regular pendants and only had an E-Stop and a little one-line LCD display for error messages. Ford once tried buying just 1 "full" pendant for every 20 robots, and using the minis everywhere else, to save money. In practice, it was such a huge pain that they eventually bought "full" pendants for all their robots, and Kawasaki stopped offering the minis. When something goes wrong on a production line, you usually need 1 (or more) teach pendants right now, and trying to hunt around all over for them is a huge time waster. Maintenance people start hoarding them so that they can grab one fast in an emergency, they start getting lost because they're wandering all over the building and people lose track of them... to date, practical experience says that it's just not worth it. -
Thanks a lot 'SkyeFire' ,
I think kuka, kawasaki and abb had this features, Can any one update on the remaining brands?
Thanks in advance for info.Regards
Sachin