Best Off-line programming software

Thanks for giving me benifit of the doubt, when I said its a cost effective solution, in my head it meant i wasn't giving a dodgy licence away,

Depends on the process, and the skills of the people using the sim software. Each brand has its own learning curve. And each software is going to have its own strengths and weaknesses.

There's also an issue of fidelity. One of the reasons PS is so expensive is that you can (for an extra fee) buy a module for each make&model of robot that guarantees a valid virtual emulation of the real robot's physical performance -- path, speed, accel, etc. For projects that require accurate simulation cycle time estimates before starting to build anything, that can be important.

Of course, each robot brand offers their own brand-specific simulation software, in varying degrees of usability, but are generally motion-accurate to their own robots.

Specific processes may require different simulation software, or at least different add-on modules. Using Delmia for paint, for example, requires a different toolset than using Delmia for drilling operations. And applications where someone wants to use a robot as if it were a CNC machine often require very specific software sets.

Quote from SkyeFire

Really, the entire Simulation side of the industry is ripe for some enterprising startup to make a really disruptive entry, with a lower-cost alternative that doesn't have all the legacy baggage of the Big Dogs.

We are trying man, I can tell you we are trying really hard days in and days out.
But it's hard.
Keeping the cost down comes with limitations.
We can't afford to have a huge team of dev to create all the features we are dreaming of.
We can't afford to have ppl with good experience with each robot brand as there are so many out there.

Every penny we make we reinvest in development. No fancy office, almost no overhead. Just a small group of ppl passionate about robotics trying to bring a cost-effective alternative to the field.

Anyway, going back to work.

And yes Collin is one of our resellers, a nice and friendly one. But I had to check the name after reading his post because it looked really really shady at first.
I'm super happy to see that you guys are keeping an eye open for that. We really appreciate it.

great

Hi Emben,

We don't have a reseller in UAE, but you can contact me through PM and provide your email address and I'll contact you.
We do most of our sales directly, so it shouldn't be an issue.

Jeremy

Right now I am in the middle between RoboDK and Robotmaster for our Kuka KR-120 2700 KRC4 Extra HA for Milling stone. It is a very difficult choice. The RoboDK seem like a very passionate group of programmers that provide VERY in depth reading material and Videos from Jeremy. Robotmaster is almost completely locked down in terms of trial (though a reseller has offered us a 30 day monitored experience). Robotmaster is VERY expensive and has on-site training, but I like the fact I can go home and watch Jer's tutorials, which are amazing by the way. I get a VERY corporate feeling from the Robotmaster sales people. Not really a good one, but the features seem impressive.

Jeremy,

Change my mind. I need multi axis milling using a 7th axis table for milling sculptures and 3 axis for lettering. I have all of the tooling, just need the OLS program.

I am using Mastercam 2022 Mill with the Multi-Axis add on package. We are leasing it for now.

Mike Rhodes

Quote from MIKERHODES

Jeremy,

Change my mind.

I'm not Jeremy, but you should probably tag or PM him so he gets an alert about this. I know he's generally pretty busy.

Quote from SkyeFire

I'm not Jeremy, but you should probably tag or PM him, so he gets an alert about this. I know he's generally pretty busy.

Thanks, SkyeFire! Busy I am, fortunately!

Hi Mike!

Thanks for the great comment! Our team and I work hard on the content we release!

I answered your PM, BTW.


Ok, about the "Change my mind." Let's give it a go.

Let's get this out the way first.

I don't have any experience with Robotmaster.
I know some of their capabilities and features through research and demo, but nothing more than that.

We are indeed just a group of "industrial robot ppl" who had a problem "Simulating and generating robot programs for multiple brands without having to sell a kidney along the way."
So we made one...

("Made"... "Make" would make more sense as it's a never-ending process/project. One that we are pretty passionate about, to be honest.)
We created a tool to help you bridge the gap between your idea and a working robot by removing some of the programming pain points.
But it's still just a tool; it won't do everything for you. It's so flexible that we can cover a lot of use cases, but the user still needs to find the correct parameters for his project.

We do Stone Milling with other customers, using external axes.
Have you tried our software?

Inside RoboDK, you can recreate your station by importing the robot from our library, creating your external axes, etc. (explained with the videos you already know about).

You can then Sync the robot and the external axis together.

All of this should be pretty straightforward.

You mentioned using Mastercam.
RoboDK has a plugin for MasterCAM that lets you transfer your CAM program directly to RoboDK with just the click of a button.
So that's one step you won't have to bother about later.

Where things will get a bit more complicated is when you will have to optimize the path with the external axis.
It might go well for the first few parts, and you might find the right set of parameters in a few minutes, or you might spend a reasonable amount of time figuring out the right recipe for your setup.
Once you know about your system, generating new parts is very fast.

We do not offer on-site support/training, but we provide a call with the purchase of a license.
You can then purchase paid support bundle if you need our direct help. Otherwise, we provide support via email. (Exactly what I was doing before ending up here.)

I don't know what to say; try it out; if it's a tool for you, great.
It's the kind of tool that you might need to think around a bit to use the full potential of, but if you can do so, it's super powerful.
(Talking as Jeremy, not Jeremy from RoboDK. I work at RoboDK because I love the product, not the other way around. You can do so much with that thing for the price.)

Anyway, I hope it helps.
Robotmaster must be a good product; they've been out there for years, and a bunch of people are using it.
It won't be a wrong choice if you go down that road.
Have a great day.

Jeremy

Excellent synopsis.

Thank you kindly for your response. I am going to try the demo out.

Thank You!!!

Hi there - found this thread as myself was looking to see what kind of adoption of various stuff there was out there. I was one of the original application engineers at Robotmaster and original devs at Octopuz in Canada.
Octopuz was started by former Robotmaster engineers - there was a split at the company where our Quebec office managed Robotmaster and then was bought/partnered with Hypertherm. The Ontario office partnered with Visual Components which forms the core of Octopuz.

They are both very capable, and come with a cost, but depending on the application they can make it extremely powerful and can provide you with functionality that saves you from hiring an additional engineer/robot programmer - so in many cases it's absolutely worth it. Robotmaster's path planning for error free robot programs is graphic, easy to understand and phenomenal - for 6+ axis applications (coordinated motion etc.) there is a lot of my own sweat and tears that make it really, really functional. Octopuz has similar tools, and a lot of welding capability, plus the space planning / factory simulation can be worth it alone.

RoboDK has come a long way! I did a trial of it a couple years ago and was able to make a milling program and get it on a machine and it worked great. It wasn't as simple as Robotmaster, but it also didn't cost nearly as much either. For smaller operations this may be exactly what they need. Kudos to the RoboDK guys, they're doing awesome work. There's some alternate universe where I too tried to develop a cost effective robot OLP Software... buuuut I make guitars now.