New to Kuka, bit lost

Oke, first thing first is what version of controller do you have with which software version, In the read first section you can read how to find that information. This is really important because somethings can be very different between versions. because you say 2005, it is probably a KRC2, but the question is if it is a standard one or something special.

The special tool you are talking about is a mastering tool, there is a difference between a dial mastering tool and the digital one that plugs into the rdw card, I assume you have the latter one.

The use of that tool is pretty straight forward, basically place the robot in the the premaster postion (the notches/ white stripes on each axis) and run mastering. You then have to place the mastering tool on each axis to master it.

Sounds like you want to take a look at System integrator's manual and Expert Programing manual. Should be able to find these in manual's section of this forum.

1. Open up the cabinet, locate the electrical diagrams and install CDs. If they're not present, most of that can be obtained from KUKA. Locate the batteries -- they will almost certainly need to be replaced.

2. Eyeball all the connections and cables, look for obvious damage or missing/unplugged cables. There should be two cables from the cabinet (KRC) to the arm (KR).

3. Is this robot standalone, or is it connected to external safeties and/or PLC?

4. Power up the controller. Assuming the robot boots properly (it can take up to 5min), the bottom window on the pendant screen will show your list of error and status messages. The blue button on the upper left of the pendant will let you change which window has focus (blue background). When you have the message window hilighted, the far-right softkey in the bottom row will change to "Ack All" -- press it. That will clear all the clearable messages. Any messages that remain, you will need to itemize and deal with first.

5. Don't bother trying to re-Master the robot just yet -- the controller batteries are almost certainly dead, and if they are, you will lost all Mastering when you shut off the controller. So either you have to keep it on all the time, or replace the batteries (and keep the controller on for 12hrs or so to ensure they're fully charged) before Mastering.

If you got "Perform mastering" after a reboot your batteries are probably dead.

batteries may last some 3-3.5 years if charged properly and regularly. if you power down controller, teach pendant and few other things will get power from batteries for a while while shutting down. also some data will be written to RDW. if batteries are weak, this may not work and you will get problems like RDW data mismatch, lost mastering etc. to move robot you need to power up drives by holding enabling switch while in T1 mode.

to run program, robot must be mastered and program must be SELECT-ed and not OPEN

As far as i know you only lose mastering and the error of the runtime counter. Normally when the krc is powered of the axis posistions are saved in the RDW flash memory (located at the base of the robot) with the runtime counter and i think the robot name. So when you get the runtime error you have to choose what the right value is. In your case this is not the RDW because that is no longer updated. you can choose registry.

If you use Shutdown from the SmartPad and not turn down power before shutdown is complete you should keep mastering I think.

This is not a KRC4, so no smartpad. As far as i am aware there are no software options to shut a (v)krc2 down.

KRC2 are Win95 right, do you have access to the Command Shell (MS-DOS), if so wouldn't a command like the one below do the soft shutdown?

RUNDLL USER.EXE,ExitWindows

I don't think that is an option either. If i am not mistaken the kuka software start shutting down after detecting powerloss. Then after RDW values are saved windows gets the command to shutdown, not the other way round. Besides in most krc2's you can only get to normal windows during boot.

Replacing the batteries is then the easiest option, and they are not to expensive so why wouldn't you?

I agree batteries are cheap, change them in order to not risk corrupting something or messing up the RDW.

Yeah, just change the batteries. In the meantime, you can work with the robot without doing any harm.

The RDW Runtime error is probably also caused by the low batteries. Basically, when shutting down, the KRC saves certain data (Mastering, Runtime meter, serial number, TRAFO) to the EEPROM on the RDW card in the base of the arm. This uses the power from the batteries to keep the controller's "brains" alive for 1-2min after main power is shut down. However, if the batteries are dead, this "writedown" does not happen. "Static" data like the Serial Number is not affected, but "dynamic" data like the Runtime hours are (the Mastering data technically isn't affected, but the KRC errs on the side of paranoia, b/c incorrect Mastering can really ruin your day).

The KRC keeps parallel copies of this data on the hard drive. But on boot, if the values don't match up, you get these errors. Once you have the new batteries in and aren't losing Mastering every time you reboot, for the "RDW Runtime" error, just choose "Hard Drive", and the KRC will update the data in the RDC with the hard drive copy.

In the event the controller were nuked somehow, you would do the opposite -- select the RDW as the "good" data, and that will be copied to the hard drive. The idea is, if you rebuild/replace memory in either the KRC or the KR, you update the "new" hardware with the "good" data from the remaining "old" hardware.

It is not really normal to see an emergency stop when a door is opened. Doors or anything that prevents humans to be in contact with the robot have there own contacts, and should have there own message. Now it could be that in your case the door is wired to the emergency stop which should mean that you never can move the robot with the door open. Normally when the machine is in T1 this is possible when holding the deadman switch.

The only thing that i can think of when you cant clear the emergency stop message is when there is a timing issue between the 2 emergency stop channels. I have had this problem in the past when releasing an emergency button the 2 contacts inside did not close at the same time. The KRC does not like this.

Floppy disk drive is behind the little black door and this still works for back-up. Even to this day you can still buy them. What i do recommend though is pulling the hard drive from the pc and make a copy of that. It is an older machine so hard drive failures could happen. There are several topics on this forum that explain how to do this and what kind of software you can use.

For the text editor there are options you can change go to Config -> extra -> editor settings. you might have to log in as expert to see it. not sure on your version.

If you get an E-Stop from opening a door (and the robot in T1), someone probably wired your safety circuit incorrectly. The issue resetting the E-Stop also implies this. To really troubleshoot the issue, you'll need to examine the actual wiring diagram.

Inside the KRC, there should be a relay board labelled FE20x (x=some number). This is where all the safeties are. There should be two relays per safety channel that have to close within a few milliseconds of each other. Each relay has a chip LED on the board that indicates its status. If you have one E-Stop relay lit, and the other dark, that would indicate a single-channel fault as Leon suggested.