MIG Welding Assembly line comprising ABB Robots moving from one place to another

I am no expert on these, but I would make sure all of my units have new batteries before disconnecting power. Also make sure all of your boards are seated and locked in place.

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If you move the robots and they don't share a common base (not cement, but a flat steel base) with their fixtures, you will probably have to make a new work object - You could save doing this if you make some kind of indication procedure (tooling balls/indicators) to ensure you physically install them in the correct location.
Otherwise if you already have a workobject, only make a new one at your new facility if your points are off.

I would also support the robot arms with some kind of dense material (foam/wood) while moving so no large jarring motion will cause issues. Air ride truck recommended.

Anytime I take the time to have robots packed up with a lot of support I haven't had calibration issues upon power up (assuming those batteries okay.)

Make sure you have OS disks for each controller on hand just in case to handle the worst.

Make sure your team that is disconnecting the robots/cabinets knows what they are doing and doesn't damage cables / wires - even if they know what they're doing, a reminder of precautions doesn't hurt. You don't want to be scrambling to try and get an order for old cables for those controllers.

Also keep in mind where cabinets will go and length of cable runs - we mirrored a room and when the architect planned the drops we didn't have enough cable length for the cabinets.

If I think I understand what you mean, touching up the points IS essentially creating a new work object, but if you can locate physically on the original points when you move, great.

Before trying this, you will need to know that your TCP Is the same as the one used when the workobject was defined - if you cant confirm that then tryi to locate on something will be moot. Usual with welding torch it’s set after the wire is clipped so it should still be relatively accurate if your programs are running correctly and your torch isn’t mangled.

If you’re lucky, someone saved the points they used for the workobject s as “pos” variables in the module file or in a system module so that would be my first place to check, otherwise I’m not sure if/where Abb saves the points used to creat a wobj (maybe someone else can chime in on that)

Alternatively if you open the Module that contains the workobject in a text editor, you can get the coordinates of the workobject and create a point with the same coords. Then you can make a MoveJ to that position (be careful) and the robotnwill move to the origin of the work object. Again make sure you’re using the same TCP or you could have weird orientations or crash your robot.if you succesfully get an origin that looks to make sense (corner of fixture, target on fixture etc etc) then you can use the Jog screen and the Workobject jog to move along a line and check that you’re following the fixture - from there it should be pretty clear if the workobject was following something in a cell.

For this reason I would recommend to anyone if they’re designing a workcell
- common base for robot and fixtures/parts
- locating features for fixtures
- engraved/scribed/machined features for visual locating
- treat robot applications like machining applications and you will thank yourself later!

If nothing exists on it - then what I would do is add features to your workcells - they can be as simple as a tooling ball, or even just 3 ground/lathe-cut locating that you can bring the torch-wire too.
Are you using modular welding fixtures (Bluco etc.)? They make stuff like this a lot easier... otherwise you'll have to mag-drill some holes. The absolute locations of these don't need to be super accurate, but do make them as far apart as possible encompassing your entire work area , fixtures etc.
In any case, do this for each robot

Now, teach 3 points on each position. Make sure you clip your wire accurately to your TCP on every robot before you teach the points.
This is not super-fast but with some help you should be able to do this all in maybe 2 days?

Then after you move the cells you have the 3 points on each one to reference. Physically move the robots, shim etc. until those points line up again.

Alternatively you could also teach a work object when you're saving the points - then after you move the robots, teach a new workobject and you can then find the difference and apply that difference to your program work object.

does this make sense? It's not a small amount of work but it might be faster in the end than re-teaching programs - and then in the future you have those reference points for checking your robot