IRC5 Emergency Stop - Need to decentralize the robot's E-stop

    Hi all!


    I have a brand new IRC5 controller with SafeMove Pro. It has Keyless option and only one E-stop button (on the flexpendant).

    Now I need to rewire it so that the E-stop goes in to an external system (a safety PLC) which handles all the safety for the machine.

    In return I get "E-stop OK"-signal (among others) to the robot from the safety PLC (via a CI502-module).


    I know how to do the setup in SafeMove, but I'm kind of clueless as to how to rewire the E-stop inside the IRC5-cabinet.


    I've tried to find a circuit diagram, but with no success.


    Also, I connected an external E-stop button to the CI502-module, declared the signal in the IO-tool and made the proper SafeMove configuration. But when pressed the robot does not go into Emergency Stop State (i.e. the system signal output for "Emergency Stop State" remains unchanged), as opposed to when I press the E-stop on the flexpendant. This seems kind of wrong, but as long as the robot stops, I guess? I mean, I set up the external E-stop button's signal to trigger "SC_EmergencyStop" with a stop category of "Catgory0Stop", so how come the robot doesn't go to "Emergency stop state"?

    En el manual del movimiento seguro, el controlador será capaz de llegar, ya que se puede conectar a la parada superior si no recuerdo mal, mañana te podía pasar el pdf del cableado Baie IRC5 si lo necesita.

    Quote from fenix5114

    En el manual del movimiento seguro, el controlador será capaz de llegar, ya que se puede conectar a la parada superior si no recuerdo mal, mañana te podía pasar el pdf del cableado Baie IRC5 si lo necesita.

    Hi,

    Sorry but my Spanish isn't what I would want it to be (thanks google translate!) :winking_face:


    Please do send me the circuit diagram if you have it. Its a "standard" cabinet (Keyless option and no E-stop button on the cabinet).

    I hope you're not (and I'm simply misunderstanding you) planning on keeping the pendant connected to the controller and bypassing the e-stop (wiring it to a PLC instead) that would be a big no no.


    Not sure how much the controllers have changed recently but there should be an external e-stop connection point which is where you want to connect your PLC to.


    Did you not get any documentation with the system ?

    Quote from SAABoholic

    I hope you're not (and I'm simply misunderstanding you) planning on keeping the pendant connected to the controller and bypassing the e-stop (wiring it to a PLC instead) that would be a big no no.


    Not sure how much the controllers have changed recently but there should be an external e-stop connection point which is where you want to connect your PLC to.


    Did you not get any documentation with the system ?

    Yes, that is what I'm trying to do. But I should stress that it is a Safety-PLC.

    And Frankly I don't see why not?

    The E-stop on the pendant should work like any other E-stop button -stop/de-energize the whole machine/line, not just the local application/cell.

    I've seen it done a lot of tiimes before.

    Sorry, guess we needed to emphasize it was a safety plc and not just a plain ol' plc.


    I guess you could wire the pendant estop back to the safety plc and have the flow as such that the pendant trigger the safety plc and the safety plc then kills the robot, but that seems a lot more complicated than simply using the external estop terminals since that's what they're for.


    If you look at the safety chain in the documentation (if you didn't get any with the robot you're much better off ordering it) it's pretty clear...

    Not sure if this is a 100% match to your controller as it's a year old but it should get you an idea of how things work...

    https://abb.sluzba.cz/Pages/Pu…/3HAC024480-011_rev11.pdf


    Thank you for the circuit diagram!


    The reason, as I stated before, for doing this is to have the pendant's E-stop button to work the same way as all other E-stop buttons in the machine line.

    Imagine that you are jogging the robot, with just the robot cell being put into manual mode, when you suddenly realize that another person gets caught in a lethal situation in the adjacent station (same machine line, different cells). Now you have an E-stop button (literally) in your hands that can stop the whole line (and maybe even neighboring machine lines, depending on how the safety is configured). This way you can hopefully save that other person's life.


    But If the pendant's E-stop button is only "local" for that robot system....


    (On another note, I did write safety PLC in the original post =)

    Quote from gpunkt

    Yes, that is what I'm trying to do. But I should stress that it is a Safety-PLC.

    And Frankly I don't see why not?

    The E-stop on the pendant should work like any other E-stop button -stop/de-energize the whole machine/line, not just the local application/cell.

    I've seen it done a lot of tiimes before.

    I agree that the e-stop should also stop the cell in which the robot resides. I have also seen this done many times. But the implementation I think you are describing is not the right one. The controller will have connectors on the panel into which you wire the external e-stop. Additionally, you get contactors to wire from the controller to the cell so that when the robot e-stop is pressed, it e-stops the cell. No need for a safety plc, it was done in such a way before those things came around.

    Nobody is saying that any e-stop shouldn't stop the whole cell !? Not sure where you guys are getting that from....


    gpunkt is saying that he'd like to re-wire the pendant stop directly to the safety PLC and then have the safety PLC stop the robot, which is fine from a technical point of view


    Personally I don't quite understand the purpose of doing so since:

    A) it's more work
    B) you're modifying a machine from it;'s original state
    C) you can achieve exactly the same functionality using the built in external estop terminals (as intended from the factory)

    D) since safety is an obvious concern - you've now also introduced an additional point of failure in the robots own "internal" safety chain


    Both ways will achieve exactly the same results (it'll estop the whole cell) and feel free to do it whichever way you want - I know which way I'd do it.


    There's only been a handful of instances where I've seen the robots estops rewired the way you'd like to do it and that's been where the robot is a part of a bigger machine, like an IMM where I think even the Euromap standard dictates that functionality since the robot is considered peripheral equipment to the machine itself.

    If you need the manuals/circuit diagrams, get a login to ABB.com and register your robots. That should grant you access in the library for the premium manuals for the robots and make your life much easier.


    Regarding the e-stops, I agree with Lemster68 & SAABoholic in thinking and experience.

    I may need to clarify.


    The robot is just one small part of a big machine line. The robot resides in an enclosure together with a few conveyors ("the robot cell").

    Adjacent to the robot cell is other types of machines, in their own cells but still part of the machine line.


    The way I was taught was that if there is an Emergency Stop button (Red button on yellow base), this should stop all dangerous machines in the field of view from the location of the Emergency Stop button.

    I also learned that this philosophy could be stretched too long, so a rational way of approach was to make the Emergency Stop button only stop the machine line where it was located.

    But the crucial thing was that there should not be different functions between two different E-stop buttons. For instance, one that ONLY stops the robot, and one that ONLY stops the rest of the machine line.

    Both buttons should stop everything. If the button doesn't stop the whole machine line then it is not considered to be an E-stop and should be of a different color than red/yellow.


    In my application, since it is a big machine line, there are many E-stops along the line. There are also a number of different PLCs controlling various parts of the line.


    So in order to have one system to rule them all, a Safety PLC has been introduced to handle this.


    This also gives the added benefit that each E-stop button is individually wired to the Safety PLC so one can see exactly which button was pressed (or if there is bad contact or cable break). That can be useful when there are up to 50 E-stop buttons along a machine line.


    But please educate me if there are alternative ways to solve this.

    Is there a built-in safe output from the IRC5 that one can use to send E-stop status of the IRC5 to the Safety PLC? Hardwired, maybe I should add, since I don't have the ability to use ProfiSAFE in this application.


    Connecting external E-stop buttons to the IRC5 is not of interest -why do that when there already is a dedicated Safety PLC?

    The goal is to implement the robot into the machine line, not isolate it.


    The resetting of an emergency stop in the machine line should work the same way regardless of which E-stop button that has been pressed. Once the button is physically reset, there is a general reset button for the whole machine line. Instead of 12 (or whatever arbitrary number) separate buttons each resetting one part of the machine line.

    again, no one ever said that any single e-stop in a cell shouldn't stop the whole cell, I don't think that would ever be an "acceptable" solution.


    Maybe the terminology is the issue here...

    The output you're talking about is the one in the diagram in post #6

    IRC5 Emergency Stop - Need to decentralize the robot's E-stop


    The top highlighted portion is where the (relay) outputs from your PLC would go and the bottom portion is what would feed the inputs to your PLC.

    That is a really great job of clarifying.

    The ES1 & ES2 outputs were designed for this as they cover both robot e-stop buttons.

    There is a simplified version of the circuit in the IRC5 Product Manual that is much easier to follow.

    Hi,


    Ok. So in order to use the built-in functionality, and not touch the ES-button:

    • Which jumpers do I remove/move, and where?
    • Where (which terminals) should I connect the safe signal from the external safety controller ("Emergency Stop OK"-signal)?
    • Where do I wire the output from the robot ("Robot Emergency Stop Button OK"-signal) to the external safety controller?

    Would be very greatful if someone could help me with this.

    Hi all!


    I feel that it's due for an update on how it all went.



    I chose to not use any of the internal terminals at all. According to my ABB-contact, when the robot system is equipped with a safety module (SafeMove option) then some of the terminals are occupied with signals to the safety module.

    So instead I mapped the internal signal "LocalEmergencyStopStatus" to a safe digital output that goes in to the external safety-plc. And in the reverse direction I added a stop configuration in SafeMove which is activated upon a low (0) signal of a safe digital input coming from the external safety-plc.


    As I mentioned in the beginning, this system was equipped with the option 1241-1 "Prepared for ABB CI502" which means that it is possible to add a CI502 interface module on which you can put I/O-cards from the AC500-series.

    In my setup I added a DX581-S I/O-card (and terminals of course) which is the interface of the safety signals between the robot system and the external safety-plc. To and from this signals were hardwired in to the other system.

    The main reason for this was the fact that the other system didn't natively "speak" ProfiSAFE. So basically it acts as a conversion between the robot system's ProfiSAFE signals and the other system.


    From the robot:

    IRC5 -> (ProfiSAFE) -> CI502 -> DX581-S -> (hardwired) -> B&R safety I/O


    To the robot:

    B&R safety I/O -> (hardwired) -> DX581-S -> CI502 -> (ProfiSAFE) -> IRC5


    In the end it all worked out nice.

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