Kuka palletizing mode message - what is it, and how to recover?

Just use T1 mode and jog A5 until message is gone

There is a variable that enables or disables palletizing mode. In palletizing mode flange is always looking down, and A3 and A5 work as a pair. So if the palletizing mode is active but A3 and A5 are not in paired positions, that message shown asking you to help by moving A5.

Brake Test, as I understand it, has to have Palletizing Mode disabled. The only time I've seen a Palletizer robot with Brake Test, the brake test programs included $PAL_MODE=FALSE before the start of the test, and $PAL_MODE=TRUE after it was done. The Main and Home programs also included $PAL_MODE=TRUE as a safety net, and the Home position had A5 at the correct angle for Palletizing Mode.

Quote from KaitechKilen

This fixed it for me, thanks. Apparently this happens after an ESTOP causes an axis to move slightly off of encoder position? Not sure what palletizing has to do with it, but if you move the axis back to where it wants to be (the pendant will suggest the right way to move it) then everything goes hunky-dory again.

I'm not 100% on the details, but I think $PAL_MODE started as an option on 6-axis robots, that turned them into virtual 4-axis Palletizers, by keeping the axis of A6 pointing straight down at all times. This would allow a KR500 to carry a 570kg payload, for example. "Classic" palletizer robots often only had 4 physical axes, often with some kind of mechanical linkage to ensure that A6 is always vertical (there is no A4 or A5 axis):

But the KUKA Palletizer robots that look like this instead:

pasted-from-clipboard.png

Have 5 physical axes, but are still only 4 "virtual" axes. They drive the A5-equivalent axis automatically to get the same end effect as the 4-axis palletizers.

However! These robots still need to be able to move A5 freely for Mastering and Brake Test purposes, so what I think happened is that they took $PAL_MODE (which already existed for 6-axis robots), and extended it a bit to use on these 5-axis palletizers. So $PAL_MODE gets turned off for anything that needs to move axes individually, but turned on for anything else.

The robots using $PAL_MODE throw faults if the wrist drifts far from the "ideal" palletizing pose, and want manual intervention to get them back to that pose before they'll run again. Basically, if they're not in the correct palletizing pose, they're not allowed to get back to it on their own, similar to how you usually have to get the robot BCO in Teach before starting in Auto.