Hi all, my company is building a palletizing cell using an ABB robot. I'm a pretty experienced robot programmer, having worked with Kuka, Fanuc, and Motoman robots in a variety of different applications. A few of those have been palletizers.
In the past I've always written the palletizing programs from scratch because in my mind this gives me greater flexibility. However, I'm really not familiar with the capabilities of the palletizing softwares from the various robot manufacturers. Specifically, I'm looking into the possibility of using ABB's Palletizing PowerPac for this new cell.
Could anyone here give me their opinion on whether or not pre-built palletizing software is worth using? My customer in this case would like to be able to store and run over a dozen different pallet configurations, with new ones able to be defined from an HMI. I'm pretty sure I can build that from scratch again, but I'm wondering if I'm just underestimating the capabilities of palletizing software. If I can just hand it a pallet configuration and it already know how to move the robot and plan the pallet approach and departure motions, that's great. However, if I still need to write robot motion logic myself, I may as well just do everything myself.
Thanks!