Fanuc multi uframes with PLC selection

fairly new to fanuc programming, no schooling, kind of fell into the new position at my place of work due to my 10 years of welding experience and interest in the robots the bought used. I'll start with the details of our setup.

R2000iA 165F

R-J3iB

Lincoln Powerwave 450

PLC screen for operators to select what stations and parts to run (setup by maintenance)

2 work tables, 1 on each side of the robot

4 small part weld jigs(square plate) per table, each Jig location is a separate UFrame (8 total). operators will know them as station 1-8.

End Goal is to have 40 different small parts welded by the robot as needed in production runs. Management wants the ability to take any 1 of 40 parts (jigs) and place it in any 1 of 8 stations (UFrames) and weld those parts.

so in a production scenario the operator (not a programmer or tech) would load parts into jig. then select station number on PLC screen and within that station number they would choose the weldment part number they loaded into jig. hit go and it would weld.

Currently we only have 8 parts in production, 1 per station. on our teach pendant we have a PNS number associated to each station. in that PNS number we call out the uframe, utool and call out a program number for that weldment. The PLC needed a PNS number for each station button, my maintenance guy said it needed to be this way, not sure why exactly.

so in order to reach the end goal of 40 parts on any station the PLC screen would need to list all 40 weldments numbers under each station button tab for the operator to select. This would also require me to make copies of our programs so that every weldment has a separate copy with a different PNS number. This seems like a very confusing way to achieve the goal they envisioned for this robot and extra cluttered. Without giving the robot some sort of vision to differentiate between jigs and select to correct program to run i don't know of any other way to achieve the end goal. my concerns about this matter have been kind of brushed off so any info from others is helpful.

like i mentioned above, I'm new to this programming stuff so if there's some trick or better way I'm all ears. I was handed this stuff after someone got it off the ground a few months earlier. they to had no programming schooling and it's all been trial and error so I may be trying to patch up a system that should have been thought out better, I don't know.

thanks.

that's good to know, great info. I'm still learning and am getting into the registers and position registers but still don't fully understand how to properly utilize them. I have a pretty good grasp on things but I feel like there are gaps to be filled in my learning. I'll do some digging in on PRs and figure that out before we get to deep into our current path. I'm a big fan of doing things right the first time to minimize future rework and have been trying to slow down the current speed of the path we're on until we get on the right tracks. thanks for laying out your response in a understandable way, helps me a lot.

so in each of my programs instead of making each point a [P] I'd instead record it as a [PR]?

that makes sense. I made a test program using 4 PRs in UF4 which is to the left of the robot if your are looking at the robot head on, zero position. My program translated to UF1,2 and 3 just fine, all of which are to the left of robot. I tired to run the program on UF,5,6,7 and 8 (to the right of the robot) but it contorted in a way where damage to the weld cable was going to happen. what could be the reasoning behind this? does it have to do with the NUT/FUT config?

the X+, and Y+ directions in all of our UFs when they were taught were the same but if i physically picked up the jig from the left side like i was the robot and walked(spun) around to the right side my X+ and Y+ have now switched so my UFs on my right side table would need to be touched up, orient origin remains the same but X and Y direction changes. am I correct? is this how it should have been set up? I used my sort of test UF 5 and tried this. My test program translated from the left side to the right side with no contorting issues. I always felt like this was set up wrong when i took the job, just didn't add up but wanted to understand more before i jumped to conclusions.

here is our layout. UFs are labeled 1-8. all UFs were taught with the pictured X and Y directions. my programs from UF1-4 don't translate to UF 5-8 location. I changed UF5 so X+ was towards the wall and Y+ was towards the robot and my program from the other side translated with the exception of 1 movement which worked when I changed the T value from NUT.

Thanks for confirming my suspicions. You've been a ton of help. I appreciate it, thank you!

I'm going to go ahead with resetting my UFs the proper way with the righthand rule. Is there a way to keep my existing points the same even though I'll be changing my current X+ and Y+ directions. or am I looking at redoing my programs?