Robot teach pendant cables.

Tharon · Apr 29, 2011

Quick question to those of you who deal with robots on a daily basis.

How do you handle the teach pendant cables? They always end up in a jumbled mess where I work. Apparently the operators and off shift maintenance like to preform some sort of elaborate mating dance with the robots while walking around the cage.

I always try to fold them in half twice, and hang them neatly over a wire hanger. But this never lasts.

The cables are roughly 20-30 feet long each, and I've been hesitant about using things like cable reels because I don't like the idea of pulling the cables up.

leitmotif · Apr 30, 2011

I think I would coil them neatly and put in a large box. This will keep them clean and undamaged. If you dont want non quals fiddling with them then lock the box.

Dan Bentler

n521554 · Apr 30, 2011

We made a hook for the pendant and cable. Production have no reason to use the pendant in our application and maintenance seldom unravel more than one wrap of cable. Once in awhile we will untwist the cable, but this is very seldom.

Tharon · Apr 30, 2011

n521554 said:
We made a hook for the pendant and cable. Production have no reason to use the pendant in our application and maintenance seldom unravel more than one wrap of cable. Once in awhile we will untwist the cable, but this is very seldom.

We try to eliminate production's need to use the pendant, but unfortunately with our setups there is always the small chance that a crash will occur. And with 1000s of cycles every day, even a small chance makes the number of occurrences more than just a few. Then they have to use the pendant to move the robot clear of the crashed position. Meaning they will have to carry the pendant to the robot location to watch and carefully move the robot free.

It's just that some people must not know how to walk in straight lines, and twirl around a few times while walking with the pendant.

OkiePC · May 1, 2011

We had cable failures because they were removed every night during sanitation so the connectors would corrode. I bought some stainless steel enclosures and put the hook and pendant inside so we simply close the door at night to keep them dry and leave them connected. I had to search here for the cable gland big enough to seal around the Fanuc connector but it put and end to our failures, and the cable usually stays nicely on the hook unless we have to drag it out for troubleshooting.

jdbrandt · May 2, 2011

Tharon said:
Quick question to those of you who deal with robots on a daily basis.

How do you handle the teach pendant cables? They always end up in a jumbled mess where I work. Apparently the operators and off shift maintenance like to preform some sort of elaborate mating dance with the robots while walking around the cage.

I always try to fold them in half twice, and hang them neatly over a wire hanger. But this never lasts.

The cables are roughly 20-30 feet long each, and I've been hesitant about using things like cable reels because I don't like the idea of pulling the cables up.

ABB has a HotSwap option, whereby you can remove the pendant, by use of a momentary pushbutton that jumpers the estop while you remove the pendant, and a jumper plug that passes through the estop signals (which is installed while you are holding the button, but keeps things right after you release it.)

Robot teach pendant cables.

Tharon

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leitmotif

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n521554

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Tharon

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OkiePC

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jdbrandt

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