Where to begin?

    My work recently purchased a CRX-10iAL with an ATI random orbital sander attached to it. I've been tasked with getting it going on sanding jobs, mostly small flat wood cutting boards. I'd love to find some ways to program it parametrically instead of programming every way point for a simple 15x20 rectangle. Sometimes the rectangles are smaller, or bigger, so parameter driven toolpaths would be amazing. Are there resources that anyone would recommend for starting out?

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  • MOM July 13, 2023 at 11:26 PM

    Approved the thread.

    You can use offsets to accomplish parametric programming.

    You would create a loop, or nested loop in the program where you modify the x and y values of your offset PR in each loop.

    You can use registers to set the overall size of your board. Then you only need to teach a single starting point.

    For loops, offsets, PRs and Registers are all covered in the manual.

    Just a suggestion...

    Thank you both for the starting point to work from. It sure would of been nice if they gave me a manual with it. I'm sure google will be able to help me out though. I was just messing around with position registers. There's a lot to learn!

    It was purchased from a value added reseller. I have reached out to request any and all manuals. I don't want to throw the company under the bus, but it is a little annoying that I have to ask for the manuals.

    Sadly, Fanuc appears to be very unwilling to openly share even basic manuals, unlike most of their competition. To the point that, if you get a Fanuc CRC account to download the manuals from their web site, the downloaded PDF will be watermarked with your account name. Apparently so Fanuc knows who to cut off if copies of these manuals start showing up on forums like this one.

    Their sales person pointed me towards some youtube videos and says there isn't a manual to download in their integrator document library. Does FANUC expect you to take a class from them? I've been using FANUC controlled CNC's for a year now and the learning curve was steep due to a strong lack of educational material. It seems if you want your tools to be popular you need to educate the users the most. Strange business model.

    Okay I got ahold of FANUC and created an account with them to access the customer portal. What a pain in the butt. Now I've got access to a few dozen manuals but I'm not seeing anything that's specific to using that tablet for programming. Most of the videos and tutorials I'm seeing are using roboguide and I'm wondering if programming on the tablet is even worth it? It seems like it's better suited for touching up positions and simple tasks, or writing a simple program. If anyone has the name of a manual I should look for that would be great.

    Quote from J.R. Mattson

    My work recently purchased a CRX-10iAL

    Regular pendant or tablet?

    On the tablet, the "timeline" programming (where you drag&drop lego-blocks onto a sequence execution line) is actually writing regular TP code, but "hiding" it from people who just want an iPad-like user experience.

    It is possible to switch the display between Timeline and TP, though I don't recall the menu option offhand. You may have to dig a bit.

    You can also write normal TP programs and import them to the robot, and call them as subroutines from the Timeline blocks.

    However, the "translation" from Timeline blocks to TP is one-way -- Fanuc explicitly recommends not trying to make edits to the TP source of a Timeline program. Instead, if you really need TP language functions that the Timeline blocks don't support, you should write them in "raw" TP and call them from the Timeline.

    Ah yes, it's the Ipad like android tablet using the TP blocks to drag and drop on a timeline. I have figured out how switch the display. That helps a lot, but I don't think using the touch screen is the best interface in general. Physical buttons are a lot better when it comes to data input. I think I found the manual I need to learn more about registers, PRs, Offsets, Uframes etc... It's funny how FANUC won't give you any manuals, but when they do, they give you EVERY manual and you have to hunt for what you need.

    Robot jogging on the tablet is downright painful.

    The tablet user experience seems to be aimed at the Universal Robots market, where people with minimal skills need to just push the robot to where they want it, save the point, maybe open/close a gripper, and that's about it.

    Like @HawME said, if you get much more complex than that, it's time to switch to regular TP.

    Soo just so I'm understanding correctly... "regular programming" or "regular TP" would be offline programming in roboguide?

    Thanks for confirming what I thought about the tablet. It seems like a good way to touch up some positions, but I don't think I'd want to write any sort of complicated program on it. Heavy and you can only use one hand, it's just not a great interface.

    Okay so TP programming would be the text based programming using the tablet\pendant instead of the drag and drop programming using the tablet. And the drag and drop is TP programming, but just with less freedom and options?

    That's nice to know we could order the pendant instead of the tablet. The tablet seems to do everything the pendant does, just in a touch screen based way. It's a little hard to use the tiny buttons on a touch screen like that, but I can make it work if that's what folks are doing.

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