robot communication

slim1978

We currently have 2 IRC5 robots that have I/O established one has a feildbust adapter they both have seperate I/P addresses that are ran into an ethernet hub(router) and each robot has its own dedicated SMC vaccuum and external air.  At the moment we have one robot loading parts into a fixture on a slide to go over to the other robot once there it will pick up and laser the parts together the problem that we are having is that the outputs for the slide is on the first robot and when the second robot picks up the details we don't know how to get the two communicating to each other to send the signal back to return the slide.  What are we doing wrong

lemster68

Are they running on the same controller?  Do you maybe also have devicenet master/slave option?  Have you no PLC controlling the cell?

slim1978

No Plc I believe that we have devicenet master/slave option and we are running two controllers

lemster68

If you do have the devicenet option then you can connect the two with that fieldbus and they can communicate with each other on that network.

slim1978

We have the two robots talking to each other when you do a warm restart on either controller then the other controller has error message for loss of communication so we are good there now. Abb is telling us to try and use cross connection but it is not working, it is not seeing any input or output signals from each others controller the problem is each of these SMC vacuums have their own I/P addresses assigned to each robot I don't know if that is an issue. Is there a way to just tie one controller to both robots that has all of the external I/O tied to one,  is there a chord or a way to connect one controller to another and not have both pendants I'm all new to this and all we need is 2 outputs and 2 inputs to talk to each other then we can move on to other things right now we are stuck till we figure this out Thanks for all of your help and knowledge. 

lemster68

I suppose you set one up to be devicenet master.  If so, then yes, you can use its output, the input to the other and make a cross connection from said input to that robot's output to the SMC.  The Master can directly use its output to control an SMC connected directly to it.