Work Object Points

jfeckla

First, let me say that I am new to robots and programming.  Now that that is out of the way, here are my question, after some background.

Here is some background:  The company I work for makes numerous different parts, usually with fairly short production runs.  This translates into many change-overs and usually fairly extensive "dialing-in" of the programs.  After our robotic welder supervisor left, I was asked to look into reducing the down time during change-overs.  We use ABB Flex Arc robots with both 2400 arms and 4400 arms.  The pendant we use is the S4C and all of our programing (at the present time) are done on the pendants.

It seems to me that once a program is set up, then reprogramming should not need to happen every time.  Usually our operators have to adjust points before running any parts, which ends up taking a lot of time and usually ruins a few parts in the process. 

We have one work object, which defines our positioning table where our jigs are mounted.  Is there a way to check the three points to define this work object? I see how to mod pos the points, but not sure how to see where they are before I mod pos them. 

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to reduce down-time between set-ups?  I know that is a wide open question, but any suggestions would sure be appreciated!

Thank you

claudio

Hi jfeckla,

A workobject can be a PERS variable. You can calculate the workobject by yourself instead of using the standard 3 points built-in procedure.
Check documentation on DefFrame function.

You can build a simple program like:

MoveL p1,v100,fine,tool1wobj:=wobj0;
MoveL p2,v100,fine,tool1wobj:=wobj0;
MoveL p3,v100,fine,tool1wobj:=wobj0;
wobj1.uframe:=DefFrame(p1,p2,p3);

Then the user can run the program step-by-step checking the points, eventually modpos them, etc...
A good idea is to write a tool-check program to be sure the tool is correctly defined (i.e. moving on the same point with different orientation).

Hope this will help you.
Claudio