Posts by tomcat955

I'm likely going to use the cheapest largest china servos / drivers I can find that will be compatible with a mesa card.

I was thinking maybe linux cnc with a mesa Card. The plasma table will be using linux I don't know if there's a better option for the crane. Might be nice to keep them on the same controller. I'm still not sure quite yet how to incorporate teaching.

Positional feedback for the crane itself i figured could be accomplished by a timer. It would not be super accurate but picking and dropping does not require much accuracy. The x and y axis would be large servo motors with large gear reduction. Easy to set positional feedback with limit switches. The A frame style gantry will ride on the plasma table rails shown in the photos above. Here is a link to the only person I've seen do anything similar.

My plan was to use large servo motors similar to how the cnc machine is driven. To give a better idea I recently purchased a 10.5x50foot cnc plasma for basicly peanuts. I really don't need 50 foot of plasma so i was thinking of using half to make a plasma table and half of the rails with heavy duty track to make a gantry. I figure I could use a cnc controlled gantry crane to lift sheets and load then on the table. Then I was thinking to either use the gantry with some form of tool swapper to switch to smaller magnet/suction cup or mount a suction/magnet on the cnc plasma gantry itself to remove finished parts and scrap from the table onto a cart or scrap bin. Anti sway can be solved by either lifting the part to the max height of the gantry and giving it a pause to stop swinging or i found a professor who agreed to help me with the coding side of things once I get the hardware side down for anti sway. I also have a kawasaki zx200 robot that could be used vs a hoist but I figured it would be easier to go the hoist route with 3 axis like the plasma table vs trying to mix kinematics into the whole deal. I'm not sure what accuracy could be achieved by the gantry but if I use it to only load sheets I'm sure stops could be put in place to preload the steel sheets into there respective areas. Or a auto sheet centering system could be implemented. If you have any advice on how to go about this I'm all ears. I understand this is not a beginner project but I am already retrofitting the plasma table so may aswell give it a shot at automating it. Worst comes to worst I can operate the gantry manually with a remote controller. Still better then pushing it by hand.

Has anybody tried to control a gantry crane with CNC specificly to load and possibly unload plates of steel on a burn table?

Has anyone seen a 6 axis robot arm being used to automatically load and unload steel sheet on a cnc plasma table? I had the idea and have not seen much on this application.

There was no physcial damage to the 1ka board I could see but when I went to boot I would just get a black lit teach pendant never made it to the kawasaki screen sometimes a blue screen. not sure what happend to it but replaced it seemed to work.

I have another 1ka board but I think I burned it up, I plugged the robot in while the controller was powered and wrecked havoc. Its a 1qn-10 board mounted to the 1KA I can remove it again and send a photo if you want to see for yourself.

I have 3mb of memory

The as group is as_0281040G

I'm not sure if this is the info you are looking for I included photos of my software version. I tried to look around in the manual for SV revisions and could not find much.

I have a 1qn-10 board mounted on the 1ka board

I tried kawasaki they told me no arc welding firmware for zx200s. I kindof felt like they did not want to help me though. I don't know if there really is a barrier stopping you from loading arc welding firmware on the controller and running it with a zx200s or if they just did not want to provide the firmware. As far as my knowledge nobody has used a zx200s for arc welding before I am the first. And I understand the complications with it. I did hook my welder up to the robot and ran some test welds it welded just fine I was impressed as good as i can weld by hand. This robot is strictly for my experimental projects and products, with the main purpose going the hard route and forcing myself to learn more about automation. I don't see myself ever using it for any more then heavily fixture welding with repeatable parts. I don't know if this is allowed or not on this forum I apologize if it's not but basicly I am asking if anyone has the arc welding firmware for me to attempt to load onto my controller. I seen in one thread you mentioned possibly using it to control the speed mid step for a set of safety fields on a robot that I did not think was made for arc welding. I apologize for any ignorance my knowledge is self taught or learned from the internet I was never formally educated.

It is strange to me too because I do not have the work coordinat tab on my menu. Is this another option?

Does kawasaki still sell the options on a controller this old? Is there any way to gain them or are they lost to time? It would be neat to add them to my robot if possible. It seems there's quite a few ways to get around lack of options or firmware using AS programming, just takes a bit more effort. For example if you don't have arc welding firmware it would be possible to program a weave using AS by using a equation to plot the points inbetween the start and stop of weld, while if you have the firmware it easy to block teach the weave. If I was able to run my zx200s d controller on arc welding firmware it would be much easier to block teach or atleast add a few options would help such as direct speed but im not sure if thats possible being that the robot was never made for arc welding firmware. Becoming fluent in AS is pretty much required the deeper I dive into this rabbit hole the more I realize, but with that being said If I can option out my robot it would be helpful to my efforts.

Hello, is it possible to add the direct speed option to a d controller talked about in the programing manual? It seems kindof unnescary complex to change the speed in the aux menu instead of just inputing a speed for the step. Also is it possible to change the units on the machine to imperial vs metric?

Thanks shadow dragon I got the robot back up and running, reinitialized everything and now it has no error codes. pretty stupid mistake, cost me a 1000 dollar board. replacing the board seemed to fix the booting issues it used to have as well so likely the board was on its way out.

Reintillized and now it boots!!!! Is there anyway to repair the old board? I'd like to have both controllers working it possible. I dident see any physical damage.

Update I swapped the 1ka board this got the teach pendant to boot but is now stuck at the kawasaki screen

Very strange now sometimes I get a solid blue screen or it powers up with a white screen that fades from purple to black.

I own a pile of d controller kawasaki robots right now. I really like the size of the zx200s i Just so happened to buy them because they were cheap and I wanted to enter robotics. I soon came to realize kawasaki is not the most user friendly for old robots. I'm considering finding a new robot and was curious what to look for. What company has the best support for old robots? What industrial robots are the most versatile for setting up that can be commonly found used at auction for cheap. Preferably something that can be loaded with a arc welding firmware.

Hello I have a ZX200s with a d controller I just got the robot set back up after having it in storage for about 6 months. I got the controller powered up to power it booted right up and I dumbly plugged the robot in with the controller on. (I did not want to turn off controller due to a board slowly failing causing to get stuck at the kawasaki loading screen) now when I power up the controller i just have a dimly lit teach pendant. I tried 4 other TP as well. Any help appreciated.

Hello, I have a couple kawasaki zx200s on d controllers that do not have the arc welding firmware and kawasaki says the firmware was never made for this series of robot... I would like to convert this robot to arc weld particularly mig weld. Has anybody done similar, used robots without arc welding firmware to arc weld? How did it work out for you?