Hello all,
One customer asked me to program a couple small robot cells. He asked me to remove the PLC of those cells as they need to perform very simple operations which submit should be able to handle without hassle.
Just in case, those robots will be KR50-R2100 and KR20-R1810-2 both with KRC4.
Those robot cells will have 2 Variable Speed Drives (VSD from now on) each.
Robots are brand new, in fact are being manufactured now and will be at the customer place in 16 weeks or so, I have time to prepare it all, to read as many documentation as needed and to replace the connection for analog IOs in case it is impossible.
The best idea would be to connect those VSDs to the robot via EtherCAT, to have maximum flexibility and to avoid electrical noises affecting analog signals.
I contacted KUKA in Spain technical support and they told me it is not possible to connect VSDs directly to the robot, but... with the right ESI (EtherCAT Slave Information file (XML from the manufacturer)) shouldn't WorkVisual be able to accept any EtherCAT device?
I am used to connect VSDs to the PLC and there, I can configure the PDO's the VSDs will use to get and send data from/to the PLC, but I have no idea if that can be done in WorkVisual.
My questions:
- Is it possible to connect a VSD directly to the robot EtherCAT bus?
- In case it is possible:
- Is there any manual I could read about it?
- In case receiving that manual is not legal, could you point at the manual title? I could ask it to the KUKA tech support.
- If there is not any manual about it, could you give me a few pointers on how to proceed?
- Can I modify the PDOs the VSDs are using from WorkVisual?
- Robot must be able to write to the VSD the following data:
- Command (word for stop, move right, move left).
- Desired rotation speed (word for Hz.).
- Robot must be able to read from the VSD the following data:
- Status (OK, not OK)
- Current torque (motor effort to rotate).
- Robot must be able to write to the VSD the following data:
- Is there any manual I could read about it?
As always, thank you very much in advance.