Hi, I am a student and my project is to mount a FANUC lrmate 200ic with R30ia controller on a 7th axis rail system. The rail is gonna come from schunk or gudel.
Can the 7th axis be added to the robot servo controller ? Or will i be needing a PLC to run a servo drive to move the rail. I have ethernetIO on the robot and a AB plc for PLC-robot handshaking.
Typically it is added to the robot controller. That requires a new axis control card, servo amp, motor, cables, and extended axis software option.
If you use Fanuc control for the servo, then it's motion will be synchronized with the robot. If you use AB servo then it won't be truly synchronized, but more of a handshake.
I've seen it done, but not often. Most of the time, making the 7th axis part of the robot just makes more sense. If the 7th axis is under control of another controller, then you lose a lot of motion coordination, and have to add a lot of extra I/O and programming to keep the two motion groups coordinated.
In general, putting the extra axis or axes under control of a PLC doesn't make sense unless there's some very compelling reason to do so.
