Posts by dblbeard

It appears you have something wrong in the configuration. Have you compared it with a known good configuration to see what may be different about the new configuration?

Were you installing the boot disc at the time of the error?

I actually did the research to find seals that are made for pressure to replace the factory seals in the motors, but as you are probably aware we are just considered dumb Americans to the Germans and Sweden's.

The problem you have with the oil getting in to the motor and finally the brakes is a very common issue on the IRC5 robots.

One of our shops had about 800 robots and over the period of 7 years we changed about 3,000 motors and roughly 600-700 Axis 2 and axis 3 gearbox's due to this issue. Early on ABB would not give us any help with this issue and kept telling us we were the only customer having trouble. At around the 2 year mark we discovered our sister plants in Germany had also been having a lot of the same issues but they just hadn't shared that information with us. In fact, many of ABB's top customers were having this trouble.

We kept trying to tell them all of this was due to pressure build up in the gear box's, but ABB refused to believe any of this. We even experimented with putting vents on the first 3 axis like the previous generation ABB's had. (S4C robots).

You would have thought that their R&D department would have discovered this early on in testing.

We have actually taken the fill plugs, "not the drain plugs" out of axis 3 on several robots and have had a 10 to 15 foot stream of hot oil to come shooting out of the fill plug hole. However, ABB engineers still said, " WE DON'T HAVE A PRESSURE PROBLEM!"

They even hired an engineer just to be over the project of fixing this problem.

Their so called fix was actually cutting the shaft end plate cover out to hold 2 seals back to back.

Just in case you don't know, servo seals aren't designed to handle pressure of any kind, they are just mainly dust shield.

However, since the gearbox's were actually building pressure they were requiring the seals to keep the oil out.

Basically this cost ABB millions of dollars and who knows how many customers. I know for a fact that this reason alone cost them the contract with the US BMW plant for the last 5 body shops. In fact, you can read that many customers that had the older S4C and S4C+ robots started refurbishing their manipulators and upgrading their controllers and cables with the newer IRC5 controllers.

I have 2 - NEW ABB S4, S4C, S4C+ IRB 6400 Internal Manipulator Harnesses
ABB sells these for $4,197.00 each.
I’m accepting offers, I will guarantee these to be in brand new condition and I will sell either 1 or both.

Please message me here.

Under the DSE Diagnostics(one of the pictures above). Open it up again then look below at the soft keys you will see
Live display or Continuous Display, select this.

Then watch the different axis numbers in communication, you should see each one of them changing. That is only ones that have motors.
If the RDC is functioning properly and you have a good RDC you should see the numbers changing slightly.

As you said before, if you are showing all "000"on more than axis I would start with changing the RDC and or the RDC cable.
I would only change one at the time.

Configuration-Motion- speed_absolute_max

Oh, you will not have the safemove option on the S4C robots so you will not have to sync them.

We currently have about 60 S4C+ robots running on IRC5 controllers. If you will look around you will see a lot of companies like the reliability of the S4C robots over the IRC5's, therefore, they upgraded their cabinets and only overhauled their manipulators.
We had to have our IRC5 cabinets custom wired for our applications.

What about the speed_absolute_max in motion topic? This will overwrite the others.

speed_absolute_max you will find this under the motion topic.

See what your max speed is set at in the Robot Data.

Yes, the oil seal on the shaft side of the motors is failing. This allows the oil from the gearbox to move through the motor and into the brake.
You can also see position faults due to the oil getting into the resolvers.
There is an updated oil seal, but you have to buy the complete motor. They are actually installing two seals together.

However, this isn't fixing the problem. We tried to convince them that the gearboxes were building pressure, and this is was is the root cause of the issue. Oil being pushed through the motor seals and through the motor is just a result. We have actually installed pressure gauges on some gearboxes and have seen a substantial amount of pressure building.
Trust me, if you are checking oil on these robots while they are running production and therefore up to running temperature, "BEWARE!".
I have seen several boys get hit in the face with oil when taking out the "FILL PLUG". Yes, the "FILL PLUG". Not the drain plug.
We have seen up to 8-10 feet streams of oil come out of axis 3 gearboxes when checked.

If your next question is how many have we seen do this? Hundreds and I do mean high hundreds.
ABB is fully aware of this issue because they hired a specific guy just to be a project manager over this problem because it was causing so much
downtime for customers.

The axis 5 motor cover can be pulled off to see if oil is in there, but you have to remove the wrist. Axis 5 is actually pointed up into the upper arm.
You will see axis 5 sticking out and unpainted in the picture.

We have seen this same issue on many of our robots. Most seniors here know of the seal issue with oil being pushed through the motor.
Have any of your robots been upgraded with the new oil seals in the motors?

Yes, you could possibly have a brake or cable issue, but in the 7 years we have been using the IRC5 robots I have only seen a couple of brake issues. 90% are caused by the oil reaching the brake. We have had robot's fall completely due to this issue.

I've run into the same issue several times over the years and have found several issues. (Make sure to watch the lights on the calibration tool)

1. Check the mechanical part of the robot where the EMT/EMD screws into, make sure the flat piece is spring loaded. Pushing it in with
a small screw driver and it should return back to same position with internal spring.

2. Check the mechanical "V" that the pin moves in and out of. On axis 2,3,5 you can see this very clearly. We have had weld slag get into
this "V" grove and wouldn't allow the pin to move into the grove. You should see this with the lights not changing states on the calibration
tool you are using.

3. If you are seeing the lights on the calibration tool changing states yet you still get the same fault, change the cable for the calibration tool that
you are using. I just ran into a bad cable 2 weeks ago in the plant.

Thank you for your help.
Would you know of a page like the KRC2 has where you can see all 6 axis temp? And possible live update?

Thank you

Have you ever used the Safety circuit function?

Monitor-Diagnosis-Safety circuit

Use the keys at the bottom to display the KCP, you can see the E-stop and deadman switches activate and deactivate as you
manipulate them.

My question is to the Kuka field service techs or Engineers.
I've worked with the KRC2 Kuka's for over 10 years now, but we are installing over 2k new KRC4's soon.
A very useful troubleshooting tool on the KRC2 robots was the ability to monitor each individual axis motor temps.
I have went through the Kuka KRC4 electrical class but couldn't get an answer.
How do I monitor each individual motor thermistor on a KRC4 using the teach pendant?

Thank you in advance for your help.

What kind of motor is it that you are using? Is it an ABB motor?

This is very common in a motor that has an encoder instead of a resolver.

The "X" over the program shows you have compulation errors. You will need to clear these up before taking a backup.

1. Do you have a good backup from an older date that you can do a restore from?
2. Once you find a good backup do a restore to get the errors to clear.
3. Sometimes it has taken us 2 or 3 tries before we could get a restore to finish successfully.