Hello everyone,
As my first post here, I want to start with a big thank you for all the contributors to this forum, with the information that I found here I was able to bring back to life a 1999 Kawasaki UX120 with C controller, now the next step would be to repurpose this gentle giant (as per owner request) to be able to MIG weld in a metal workshop in a repetitive manner.
From all that I could find until now after spending a day reading is not looking to straight forward but I'm hoping to get a more clear image if someone already did that and would be open to share the information witch I'm sure was not easy to acquire, I have read about the communication needed between the robot and a weld controller but the idea is that the environment here is much simpler, a rotating table with 2 or 3 working positions where the element to be weld are positioned and clamped by an operator and for the robot just to give the start command to weld to the preprogramed positions.
The welding equipment is simple one and all the welding settings will be done on the welding machine, the robot job would be just to move to position, to give a feedback that is on the preprogramed position and use this feedback to activate a relay that will start the welder as the robot moving in the programmed direction with the programmed speed and deactivate weld relay when weld travel distance is achieved or the programmed time is elapsed.
In a sense I think that this process does not need to be defined as welding from the robot point of view, the robot should just move around and just give feedback to a digital out when he is in a certain position for a defined length or time, the safety and the fault situation handling will be the rotating table operator task and also all the possible safety equipment will be included in the robot controller safety loop.
For the moment the teaching will be done on the TP witch is a touch screen type but I tested the ethernet port and I could connect to the controller and give commands, I'm also opened to 3rd party programs that could make teaching more easy but most important now is to know if the existing hardware have free I/O's or extra hardware is needed.
I will try to attach a photo of the rack and I can provide other info that would help to go forward.
Thank you in advance for any kind of feedback and all the best wishes.