Semi-OT: Fanuc Spider robots

Hi all,

Fanuc has a line of spider robots we've been taking a look at. Really neat and incredibly fast, but I have zero experience with Fanuc robots. I was wondering if anybody has used these, and have some impressions they'd like to share (speed, accuracy, reliability, programming environment, etc).

I've included a link for a video if you don't know what I'm talking about:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pl9YtdtruIc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BeDbN-QR97w

Thanks,

TM

I have no experience with those types of robots, but they do look amazing. We have 3 Fanuc M410 4 axis robots used for palletizing, and those are the only robots I have worked with. The robots I have are very, very reliable. The tech support is outstanding. The PalletTool software we have on our machines can be a bit of a pain to work with when a lot of customization is required, but is still a good product and a great time saver.

My only complaint about Fanuc robotics is the availability of manuals. They will gladly sell them to you, and provide docs on disc if you purchase a robot, but you won't find them available for download on their website.

It appears that all the major manufacturers are making this style of robot, and the speed is incredible. We would love to be able to use them to pack frozen meat patties into boxes, but we don't have the floor space for the number of bots it would take at our production speeds.

That is about all I can offer. Hopefully others with more robot experience can add to this.

Super easy to teach, incredibly tedious to change the wiring harnesses. Unless they get bumped or run into an object that shouldn't be there, they're very accurate and reliable, specially if you mount a vision system to one.

Hi guys,

Thanks for the feedback, it sounds encouraging. Zephyr, how hard was the vision to set up?

Thanks,

TM

Not sure how hard it was for Zephyr but I learned real quick that vision is a issue all in itself.

Getting repeatablity in such a short time span definatly makes it fun.

Lighting is the most critical. The better you can see what you want to pick up the faster you can go. Also take into account ambinet light. I like to use Near Infrared whenever I can because Ambinet light usually has little or no effect so I do not have to use a bunch of light shielding.

Also, for tight movement make sure the camera has a nice and rigid mount and doesn't vibrate. Its physical reference to the robot is critical.

I have mounted cameras directly onto the robot but that is a whole different can of worms.

Most aplications you can mount the camera to a seperate stand and feed cordinates to the robot.

Also consider your Comms. Make sure you do not have to go thru all kinds of crazy data conditioning to get this to work.