Posts by Sean_MMSNI

I am writing a program to stack parts, on every other row the parts need to be flipped. I need a trigger to tell the robot if the part needs flipped or not. I already have a counter in place that counts each row so if I could check if the value of the counter was odd or even, I could then use that to determine if the part needs flipped or not.

Is this possible to check if a value is odd or even? I have been trying to do some research on it and found some examples using the Trunc /MOD function. Is there a simpler way to do it or do I need to use this? If this is the only way could anyone give me an example piece of code I could experiment with?

Thanks in advance.

I found the problem, it was a partial internal breakage in the wire for pin 9. Replaced it and all is working fine now.

Thanks for all of your suggestions.

Quote from hermann

- You should measure against Pin 9 of the same connector where the signal is (X4). May be a weak 0V connection to this bank.

- try a direct connection to 24v to the desired input
- otherwise hardware defect of the DSQC

I have measured against pin 9 of the same connector, it was just easier to take a photo as shown.

I should mention, when the robot is stationary the I/O remains on constantly and never seems to cut out.

I will try connect constant 24v to the board the next time it is running and check it.

I have an S4C controller here for an IRB6400 robot, I have some of the I/O connected to another robot and other equipment, recently I have added another 4 Inputs from a PLC.

The problem I am having is the robot keeps missing the signal even though it has a constant 24v going to it. It reads the signal most of the time while the robot is running through the program however it seems to not be able to read the signal during some parts of the program.

I have tested this by watching the indicator leds on the I/O board and it lights up and then it will start to flicker and turn off. I have tested this with a multimeter held to the specific Input I am testing and it has a constant 24v the whole time even when the led turns off.

The power for the bank of inputs I am having problems with is coming from the robot itself.

Does anyone have any idea what is going on, I have the first bank of inputs wired up and they work perfectly so I am unsure what is going wrong.

I have attached photos of the I/O

Thanks a Million Lemster.

I have a good deal of experience in s4c systems however I have to create some basic welding programs on an irc5 system tomorrow including weaving. Is the welding software and commands the same as they are in s4c? I have the arcware manual for the s4c showing what each of the parameters controls. Is there a manual for the IRC5 robotware arc or is it the same system?

Thanks very much SkyeFire, this is very helpful. The problem detecting the tyre is there are that many different versions with different diameters and widths even for the one generic size of 17.5rim.

Your idea with the scale under the wheel sound like it could be a good option, I think I will look into this and try this.

Yeah I have been looking at the LoadID function in the manual, I think the robot has to be in a certain position with axis 5 and 6 nearly in the 0 degrees position and will take about 3 minutes to workout, my cycle time atm is just over one minute so this wouldn't be a viable option for me.

if there is no way to do this I might have to continue to get the operator to select the wheel size.

I have a robot here (IRB6400, s4c) that lifts different size truck wheels, small ones about 50kg up to large ones at 150kg. At the moment there are 3 main groups with similar weights, the 17.5 inch that are the small wheels, 19.5 inch wheels which are the medium wheels and the 22.5 which are the large. The wheels are fitted by a guy then loaded on a conveyor where the robot lifts the wheel and stacks it. they are done in stacks of 6 mostly. The guy fitting the tyres sets the wheel type on the controller every time he changes sizes.

The problem is, they have that much going on they often forget to change the program on the controller and the robot crashes due to incorrect load data. I am trying to make the program so it will work for all size of wheels without any human intervention, I have everything else figured out except the load data. Is there anyway to get the robot to calculate its own load data or is there something I can change that will allow the robot to work within this range of weight without crashing due to load data?

Thanks for this, yes I have been looking at this function in the manual and it seems like it would be perfect for my application

I have an ABB robot with s4c controller that stacks tyres directly on top of each other. At the moment the robot stacks the tyres 6 high. It stacks the first tyre on the ground on a recorded Move L position. It then lifts another tyre and moves to an offset position directly above the Move L position. It then moves straight down on the Z axis until a sensor mounted on the underside of the gripper detects the tyre below and triggers the robot to stop and pull out leaving the tyre stacked on top of the other. It does this for the remaining tyres on the stack by multiplying the tyre count by the tyre thickness. The tyre thickness offset by is entered into the teach pendant at the start.

This works fine, my only problem is there is a lot of different thickness of tyres so the offset tyre width needs to be set for every different tyre. I have to do this as if I used the worst case thickest wheel offset, then when using a thinner tyre by the time the offset is multiplied by the 5^th tyre the robot comes in way above the stack and takes a long time to reach the tyre below. This plus the fact the guys operating the robot forget to change the thickness a lot.

My question is, can I bring the robot in above the first tyre at the thickest tyre offset and bring it down as normal until the sensor is triggered then record the position it was stopped at? I could then use the Z valve of the recorded position to work out the tyre thickness to use as the offset for the remaining tyres in the stack?

If I could record the position at that point, I could minus the original move L position from this and the Z axis value would then be the tyre thickness.

Is there a command I can use to get the robot to do this?

I have a 14 meter track that I am trying to align, it has come out of alignment due to being incorrectly installed. I have been reading through the manual and it states to use a laser lever, however it doesn't give much information on what type of laser level to use. Any of the laser levels I have been looking at has a +/- 2mm tolerance which obviously isn't good enough.

Does anyone know the best type of laser to use and what is the best method to use to level and straighten it?

I contacted ABB direct and they got back saying it should be the 55mm one, the 54mm versions seems to have a different surface finish and they seem to have a slacker tolerance. My guess is either somebody tried to modify original ones to remove defects or else they are a badly made china remake.

We have booked a cnc machine installer to come out and relevel the track again however he cant come for another 3 weeks. So I am trying to do what I can to improve it until he comes.

We purchased a robot and track from a second hand robot supplier, the robot is an irb6400r s4c and the track seems to be an IRBT6004. The robot was made in the year 2002 however the track seems to be a newer version made in 2014. the track also seems be be made up from several different tracks as there are stickers on some sections saying IRBT6004 and then on others IRBT7004 and then on others IRBT4004. From what I can tell the sections of track seem to be the same no matter what sticker is on them.

the difference I have found is in the rack itself that the pinion drives on. I have found two different types there is one type that measures 54mm from the base of the rack to the top of the teeth and there is another that is 55mm. This seems to be giving me issues with back lash and unwanted movement. I have attached a photo of both types below

Does anyone know which is the correct size to be use? Iv laid the two on top of other with the teeth meshing and the pitch seems to to be the same for both types.

I found the problem, the track body was not grounded. The robot and track carriage was grounded just not the track body. I run a ground cable from the track base to the robot controller it stopped all the errors

I have an ABB IRB6400R on a 14m track, s4c. Recently I have been getting quite a lot of errors. The two most common errors are (50052 Joint speed error, The speed of joint TRACK is too high relative the ordered speed) and (38033 Transmission failure, Axis computer detected failure in transmission to/from serial measurement system 1).

The errors come up randomly during a program and cause the robot to go into crash state. The track speed error comes up in programs where the track is stationary.

Anybody any idea what is going on?

I have an IRB6400R and I am pretty sure the brake release in axis one motor has gone faulty, so I want to change it. I have another robot here that is exactly the same and the part number on the motor matches up so I want to use it. I realise that will have to fine calibrate the motor.

What I want to know is how hard is it to get the robot calibration spot on again. This robot is used as a CNC robot and has a cell constructed around it with programs already made. Will calibrating it throw it off and mean all will need repositioned?

I have the 324 board however i have a usb emulator and the max file size i can fit on it is 1.39MB , so how do I get a larger file o it?

My programs use a mixture of MoveL MoveJ and MoveC so dont think I could use this.

I have an ABB IRB6400R S4C on a 14m track that i am useing as a cnc robot. The software i use to produce the cnc programs for the robot outputs some very large programs upwards of 100,000 lines of code. My robot has a usb emulator installed on it and at the moment i have to split the programs down manually into smaller programs of around 8,000 lines as that is all the robot can handle.

Between each program it takes between 10-15 mins to load each program which is very time consuming. Is there anything I can get for the robot that could perhaps increase memory so I can load bigger programs of is there any I can get to decrease loading times?