Help Making Auto Error Recovery Program

    I'm working with an Arc Mate 100iB on a R-J3ib controller with a MicroLogix 1500 PLC. This is a weld operation.

    When the robot faults on a weld I want it to turn off weld, continue through the program, move to a maintenance position, receive an input from the operator, restart program in dry run, then begin welding where it left off and complete the program normally. I've worked with programs like this in the past so I know what it should do, but I've never built one. I also have access to the PLC with some basic knowledge of how to modify it.

    Can anyone give me a step-by-step on how to make this happen?

    First you would need to keep track of which welds you finished before the robot faulted. You could use a register to keep track or maybe send a signal to your PLC after each weld is finished. You then use whether or not the weld was finished as a condition for turning on your torch, so that the robot doesn't try to reweld seams during the dry run.

    When the robot faults you need to store the robots current position, you can use the LPOS command to set the current Cartesian coordinates to a Position Register. You can send this info to the PLC and the PLC can check when the robot reaches that position before turning on the torch. Or you can do it on the robot side, by just heading to that PR when you get to the weld instead of the original Position and start from the PR instead. There are several different ways to do it, you can do it in whatever you feel the most comfortable doing.

    I am not certain what deficiencies the R-J3 controllers have versus the R30 controllers since I don't work with them often. Personally I would try to do as much control logic through the PLC because I don't know the R-J3s as well.

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