Posts by Duranthas

When changing the J1 reducer on a M10 or M20 robot, it requires unhooking the wiring harness from the base and pulling it through the middle of the J1 joint. In doing so, I will lose power to all my encoders requiring a remaster of all joints. Is there a way to trick J2-J6 so that they can retain their position? Obviously, J1 will be off, but it seems like there should be a way to get the other 5 to play nice since they will be physically identical to where they were before power was removed from them.

I know that I could move joints to their zero position before I turn off power, but that only works well for J4-J6. If J2 & J3 are at their zero marks, the robot is a bit unstable when the J1 is unbolted from the base so I'm uncomfortable with doing it that way.

Thanks

I would be really interested in how to do this as well.

Quote from PnsStarter

I believe, at my computer it was there.

And with RG Rev.ZE it is available.

How are you guys getting the higher revs? I literally just checked and ZC is what it's showing in the portal.

Are you sure that your Roboguide version is V9 Rev ZD? Looking in their portal right now, I only see V9 Rev ZC.

Looking at my V9 Rev ZC, I see that if I am in the program, press Next, press F5 for EDCMD, and then select 5 for REPLACE. I then have to choose what I'm wanting to replace, then what I want to replace it with, and then it gives me the option of ALL F2, YES F3, NEXT F4, EXIT F5. I think this is what you're looking for, and it does indeed look/behave different than I remember.

Quote from H.CHOI

Hey Duranthas, Thank you for the comments

I am very familiar with robotics side you mentioned above which are DI,DO,I/o mapping, UOP signal, etc.

I am also taking couple of online course for allen bradly PLC basic stuff(not advanced course)

Our company has a plan to make robotic cell fully automated which we need PLC on it. That's why

I will take that course. I talked to Fanuc and they said I should take pre-course or take a test and pass it in order to enroll that course. Have you taken the test or you took pre-course for that?

Thank you for sharing your experience.

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I did not have to pretest, but I have taken some Fanuc courses before this one (Handling Tool, Electrical Mtc, a mechanical class, and Advanced Teach Pendant). I do remember talking to a guy on the phone and he asked me a handful of questions about PLCs while I was registering, but I just assumed he was making small talk. Maybe he was testing me... You would do well to find out what PLC platform your company wants to go with and get familiar with it before you take this integration class because if it isn't AB, then you are wasting time and money. During the course, the instructor mentioned that they are toying with the idea of having a similar class for Siemens PLC, but who knows if that will ever even happen.

I took that class, and you really should have some basic understanding of Allen Bradley PLC & HMI products. I suppose you could walk in without any PLC knowledge, but you better be a very fast learner. The "final" for the course was that you write a robot program that interacts with a PLC program that is triggered by an HMI, and all of those programs are written by you. It isn't very advanced PLC or HMI programming, but if you have no experience in that area then I would think it will be difficult. If you have no PLC guys, nor plan to hire any, I don't know that this would be money well spent for you. From a purely robot side of things this class teaches how to set up digital and group I/O, map UOP signals, and set start method. You then use the digital and group I/O to control the robot. Not to poo-poo on Fanuc, but watching Adam Willea on Youtube, and the posts on this forum covers that very well.

That said, having that certified course completion paper never hurts and I don't regret taking it.

That fixed it. A thousand thanks to you sir.

So I am configuring a new M-710 to communicate with an Okuma lathe, which I have never before tried. My previous experience has all been communication with the A or B rack, or to Allen Bradley PLC via Ethernet. This Okuma came with an Anybus X gateway which converts the Okuma Devicenet to Ethernet IP, and the particular gateway I have is a slave. I have the robot Ethernet IP configured so that slot 2 is a scanner (not adapter), and I believe all my configuration settings are correct. For whatever reason, I’m instructed that the Okuma DI/DO all must start at 1101 so after expanding my available I/O to 1152*, I configure my DI/DO and everything looks great, till I restart the controller. Every time I do, it adds the configuration DO[65-96] and I can’t figure out why. Please see screenshots of how it’s configured. It will work as is, but I gotta admit that I’m annoyed that this seemingly appears for no reason.

*So I needed DO up to 1148, and when you cold start to change the Digital I/O sizing, I can put 1148, but it always gives me 1152, and will stay at 1152 as I decrease the number till I get go 1142, then I only have 1142 DI/DO. It appears to only work in increments of 8. Am I correct in this? Also, can anyone point me to a manual which goes into all the DI/DO configurations? I've taken the Fanuc class which details Allen Bradley configuration, but outside of that I'm pretty well lost.

Thanks

We only use a handful of TP programs. Basically MAIN, which calls RECOVERY, and from there, MOV_HOME, MOVE_MTC, GET_PART, and PUT_PART. That's about it. I'd like it is the screen only showed those programs, and no others. As for changing the type to only show TP programs, that will work, except I'm positive that someone will be kind enough to fat finger or muck around and change it to something else which results in me getting a call. Once they changed it to MACRO and of course freaked out because it didn't list the needed programs. If there was a way I could make it only show TP programs, and not allow that to be changed, it would also work well.

Thanks! I appreciate this info.

On a brand new robot, it came with quite a few programs that I would like to either delete or hide somehow. There are TP programs such as CLSKP, CLSKP_EX, CLSKP_G2 (and it goes G2-G8), and SETSKCOL, There are tons of VR & PC, and a handful of macro (MR) programs such as AAVMFREEPOS (VR), AAVMMAIN (PC), CBPARAM (VR), COMSET (PC), GEMDATA (PC), GETDATA (MR), GET_HOME (PC), HTCOLREC (VR), HTTPKCL (VR), IPRNGSET (PC), IPRNGSHO (PC), IRC_COUNTER (PC), IRC_MSG (PC), IRC_STATUS (PC) IRC_STLABEL (PC), IRVTYPE (VR), REQMENU (MR), SENDDATA (MR), SENDEVNT (MR), SENDSYSV (MR), SETSKCKL (PC), SFIGET (PC), SV_ADJUST (MR), SWIUPDT (VR), TBSWMD45 (PC), TPSNAP (PC), VCMRINIT (PC), VC_MOVE (PC).

Obviously some of that is for collision skip stuff, but we don't even use that feature. I have backups of everything, so is it safe for me to delete these or is there something here I'll be unknowingly be using? Or is there a way to permanently hide them? And I am aware that from the select screen I can hit F1 for TYPE, and select only TP programs, but I'm 100% confident that someone on the floor will muck about and change that, freak out, and then I get a call because it looks different.

Did it change to something else, or is it empty? If someone has UI17 PNS_STROBE mapped to a digital input, and toggles true, it will wipe clear your "$shell_wrk.$cust_name" and your robot will just sit there doing nothing after you send it a start signal.

If it changed to something else, then I'd say someone is changing it.

I do have DCS on all of these robots. Unfortunately, when we bought the cells they aren't even using DCS so it has only been a pain in the butt when mastering out a new servo/reducer. So if I get my learn on, and figure out DCS, am I correct in that I can use a UOP signal (say TP enabled) as an DCS input to another robot which will then prevent it from moving?

I have multiple robot cells which have more than 1 robot per cell and each robot has its own controller cabinet. The entry gates are wired to the Fence Open safety signals, but recently our safety department has requested additional measures. The scenario they want to prevent is this... If one were to switch the controller out of auto, enable a teach pendant, and enter the cell, they want to make sure no other robot can be jogged while the original person is in the cell. I'm considering running the controller Auto/T1 switches through safety relays so that I can control the SERVO ON signal. Does anyone have a better idea? Robots are all R30i-B, communicating through ethernet to an AB L6X or L7X that is not a safety PLC.

Thanks

That was exactly it! I find it kind of weird that there is an auto assignment considering how differently the robots end up being configured.

Thanks so much for your guidance. I greatly appreciate it.

I have an LR mate that we are setting up as a trainer robot. Under the digital inputs and outputs config screen, I reassigned the I/O range and start numbers. My current setup for DI looks like

I am not using anything above input 20, so I deleted the assignments in ranges 81-88, 101-120, and 121-132. That made it look like

However, once I reboot my previous I/O assignments all come back. It isn't causing me any problems, but it is something I can't explain. Does anyone have a clue why the I/O mysteriously comes back after rebooting?

HawkME, that is exactly what I plan on doing. Thanks for the reply, it's nice to get some reassurance that I'm not screwing it up.

On a semi related note, I've seen in the Fanuc CRC section where you can download and update your software. I'll not be doing this because I'm scared I'll hose the system, but do people do that so they standardize the software running? What's the advantage?

When you install Roboguide, it asks which robot software version you want to install. If I were to look on the teach pendant of the robot, how do I found out what version that robot is running? I know if I go to

Menu / Next / Status / Version ID

and look under software, I see that line 11 says Software Edition No. V8.10/30 on one particular robot in my plant. Is this the correct way to look it up? I have the hard drive space, but felt it unneccesary to install every version and would like to limit it to only what we actually have.

Thanks for the additional info. I'll look into that. This is truly strange.....

Here is a snap of the directory. As you can see, the files aren't there. I'm so confused....