R-30iA - SYST-0034 Appears Constantly

    Got kind of a weird one and want to check in with the hive-mind:

    M-10 arm, R-30iA controller. Arm pauses constantly during cycle because of a lost Hold Signal in UI. Communication with the PLC is over Ethernet IP. Connections are all good, heartbeat timer is fine (I made it stupid long and it didn't error out) and got the same results no matter what Ethernet switch port I plugged into.

    No collisions, no alarms, no faults or blown fuses I can find.

    BUT, and this is the weird part: the Hold signal drops out (and only ever the Hold signal) at one of 4 very similar positions in the system. This, to me, screams bad connection/cable somewhere on the arm, but all the RIO is fine, doesn't flash or hang.

    Anyone seen anything like this? I've got a new cable on order (EE connection breakout to J box) but if that's not it...PLC Ethernet card? Bad PSU in the robot controller?

    I don't have visibility on the PLC side, so I guess there could be a condition flashing there causing it to drop the Hold signal to the robot?

    Scraping the barrel on this one and appreciate any feedback.

    Thanks!

  • Go to Best Answer

    How are your UOP's mapped?

    Are they through the EE connector? I've seen this done before and it always drives me crazy. Model A I/O is cheap, and even cheaper and readily available on the used market.

    If your UOP's are through the EE connector, and this is costing downtime or scrapped parts, PLEASE switch to a legitimate I/O bus; anything but the EE.

    If you need to use UOP's in order to start from a remote location, there is no reason why you can't afford the correct interface. Conversely, if you can't afford the correct interface, you have no reason to use UOP's, just set the robot to local control.

    If you're using EIP for UOP'S, are you also using EIP through the arm for other control needs? If so, can you split the two between two different network cables? They will need to be on different subnets to work in tandem.

    PDL - UOP is over EIP (rack 89) and Robot IO is all typical point IO.

    For the record, this is a service call - not my integration.

    The one thing I'm only thinking to check now would be Group outputs to see if it's sending anything regarding sensor status back to the PLC. If something is flashing there that shouldn't be because of an intermittent failure, and the PLC is immediately saying 'dropped product' ...but the HMI seems decent for Error messages and isn't calling anything out.

    I'm on board with it being an EIP problem, but I don't have any Ethernet on the arm at all, so it bugs me the problem seems positional.

    • Best Answer

    Sounds like the plc is dropping the hold signal for a scan or two.

    You could temporarily map the hold to a flag (rack 34), force it on, and see if the problem goes away. If it does, then you can tell the plc guy to fix his code.

    My other idea, and this is a longshot, is that maybe they ran the ethernet cable next to the servo cable for a bit, and when the robot preforms certain moves, the current causes enough interference on the cable to interrupt the connection. Again, longshot.

    Check out the Fanuc position converter I wrote here! Now open source!

    Check out my example Fanuc Ethernet/IP Explicit Messaging program here!

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