Fanuc RJ 3 Robot Controller

Is anyone familiar with this Robot controller?
I have 1 in my plant, and so far the only way to program pallet configurations is with the teach pendant. Boy does that suck!
I am curious if anybody has experience with the Pallet Tools progrma, such as ease of use in creating and modifying patterns. I need to find out what it costs, but only for the pupose of getting a P.O. My company will buy just about anythng I ask for if I need it, and it looks like I need something better to create and edit patterns. Any feedback will be greatly appreciated.

GB

Rumor has it that we are due to get one. I was curious as to how to enter the pallet pattern. After reading your post maybe I don’t want to know. Another headache. Please keep us posted.

Thanks

control_logic said:

Is anyone familiar with this Robot controller?
I have 1 in my plant, and so far the only way to program pallet configurations is with the teach pendant. Boy does that suck!
I am curious if anybody has experience with the Pallet Tools progrma, such as ease of use in creating and modifying patterns. I need to find out what it costs, but only for the pupose of getting a P.O. My company will buy just about anythng I ask for if I need it, and it looks like I need something better to create and edit patterns. Any feedback will be greatly appreciated.

GB

Click to expand...

Pallet tool is nice, didn't get to work with it but seen it at work.
Besides the pallete tool and paint tool and stuff Fanuc has come out with a software package that can be installed on your PC. Don't remember the name, it's been a while but you can do most of your programming on the PC and load it to the controller using the PCMCIA flash card.
It is worth a try, beats the pendant work.
If I remember correctly $4900.00 plus $1200.00 for the pallet tool. Though that was our pricing, integrator firm going through at least a dozen or so cells per year. (415s + controllers)

What si the robot model number?

Is it RJ3, RJ3iB, RJ3iC or another variation?

What is the controller firmware version?

What is the PalletTool Version (in the controller)?

Monochrome or color teach pendant?

bkottaras said:

Pallet tool is nice, didn't get to work with it but seen it at work.
Besides the pallete tool and paint tool and stuff Fanuc has come out with a software package that can be installed on your PC. Don't remember the name, it's been a while but you can do most of your programming on the PC and load it to the controller using the PCMCIA flash card.
It is worth a try, beats the pendant work.
If I remember correctly $4900.00 plus $1200.00 for the pallet tool. Though that was our pricing, integrator firm going through at least a dozen or so cells per year. (415s + controllers)

Click to expand...

I have a year old quotation for PalletPro at work. I think it was around the ~$4000 mark, and will give you infinite cosmic power over your offline simulation of the real cell, and pretty much guarantee, that once you spend the hours to set it up, flawless results on the real thing.

If you have the original software manual for the robot, it may contain original options disks, including PalletTool PC on floopy maybe, in nice sleeves at the end of the manual.

PalletToolPC is plenty for creating patterns, viewing them graphically, making gripper (software selected) changes, it does have some features that don't work in certain applications, and uses Kfloppy (included) to serially download to the controller db25 port.

I am speaking based on my 1 year experiences with RJ2, RJ3, RJ3iC controllers with M410i, and M410iHS bots.

I am well versed now in PalletTool v4.11 for the RJ2 and PalletTool v5.11 for my newer robots, so give a little more info, and I will hopefully be able to help further.

Tried to edit the post, but got kicked off due to ice on my satellite.

But the rain melted it off, so just wanted to clairfy, that PalletTool PC is the no frilss, git'r done pallet pattern creator/downloader.

The top of the line stuff, PalletPro is a full blown 3-d graphical robot emulator including firmware and software emulation, even an on screen teach pendant if you need it. It has menu driven pallet setup tools just like PalletToolPC, but will graphically let you test the pattern, and includes a nice download interface.

Roboguide is the core emulator, and ithas add-ons for various specialities like painting, palletizing, welding, etc. It can even upload the exisitng workcell (pallet stations, infeeds, unitloads, system settings, and more and recreate the whole setup offline if the firmware in the controller is new enough.

My robot is an M410i, the controller is a System R-J3iB
I have no clue about the firmware. A colleague of mine has done all the pattern creation and editing to date, but I believe he is leaving very soon, and I don't want to get stuck with the friggin mess and trying to decipher all the manuals. The equipment is from Elettric80 and all the programming is in Italian which I don't habla. It makes for interesting troubleshooting sessions at 3am via telephone. He had the benefit of being there when the equipment was installed, and having learned from beginning.

What does he use? The teach pendant? Is the teach pendant monochrome or color...I am away from work, so I can't remember the models that support it.

Is the teach pendant firmware in Italian? If so, then break out the checkbook and replace it, along with getting english manuals, if you can't come up with the original discs, but first:

Get the ID number from the robot itself. The robot controller should have this number. Then call into their excellent support line, request technical support, and give them the id number.

They will be able to tell you every software option that was ordered with that machine by the integrator, and may give you replacement software at a huge discount, especially if you are a potential lost customer. It will depend on the status of the company that did the integration.

We had the same issue, when APS wnet bankrupt, a few years after installing our robot upgrades, they had purchased a license for PalletPro as part of the robot purchase from Fanuc, but, here, no one here knew it.

Only by calling in with another software question did we discover this when they looked at the purchase history for that robot ID and told me over the phone all of the OEM software and hardware that had been bought over the years.

So, later I tore the lab apart and found the original CD, and then got the tech phone support to email me the license key, already was paid for, no cost, whatever licenses your company has rights to should be honored to some degree by Fanuc, if the integrator and previous maintenance persons kept good records with them.

1-800-iQ-ROBOT

Yes, he uses the teach pendant. It is monochrome, and the actual program, not the OS is in Italian. OS is in English, (Thank God) or I'd be completely lost. We only have the manuals from Elletric80 (still very much in business). They are selling us another LGV (unmanned forklift), so we may be able to pull some strings there. The robot itself is excellent, I just replced the gripper with a brand new one, and sent the old one for factory repair, but other than the programming as it is now, it is a super cool machine. I figure if the Co. is willing to spend the money to make my life easier, I want to make sure I get the right thing. For example, I have one machine that wraps the poly film around toilet paper or paper towels. It uses Simotion to control the machine. I asked for and immediately recieved Simotion Scout software, and approval for Siemens training at the next possible date.

Go to FANUC training for sure.

I took one class last year and it was fantastic.

It was handling tool basics, but very applicable for TP programming.

The class you want may be PalletTool Operations and Programming.

Their facility is awe inspiring, and the classes very well worht the money.

I have been able to pick apart pallettool to learn it by trial and error after getting the Handling Tool class.

I has to fix a lot of limitations in our workcell customized TP programs, but I am 90% done to allow our "sausage tetris" area stack many products that were hand-stacked for years due to the lack of inhouse programmer capability.

That cell has 3 infeeds, 3 pallet stations, a slipsheet stack and two pallet feeders. Sorry for rambling, but I am glad to have some Fanuc Pallettool posts because other forums are not so richly populated and frequented.

Paul

I will see if I can get into a Fanuc school, I want to learn everything I can. I also have 4 "gantry style" Fanuc palletizers, but the OEM did a ton of interface work on them as they are the "off the shelf" solution sold most often. Consequently, they are super easy to setup patterns. I can do them in 15 mins or so, and usually works/looks good on first try. Don't worry about rambling, I was hoping to hear from you. I searched the forum earlier today and saw the sausage tetris post.

control_logic said:

Yes, he uses the teach pendant. It is monochrome, and the actual program, not the OS is in Italian. OS is in English, (Thank God)...

Click to expand...

So, the software menus are Italian? Those may be as simple to translate as retyping some text in TP programs. I don't have any offline tools for creating TP programs yet, so I do all my work offline, and then use the TP copy(rename)/edit with my thumbs thing from a paper backup.

I am leery about sharing a PMCIA card with the laptop after a bad experience with the RJ2. Simply reading the disc in a windows machine and copying the files to our backup network drive, made our disc appear as unformatted to the RJ2 controller, so our new practice is write only to the cards for backups, and save simple TP changes serially when using PalletTool/KFloppy.

So I use the serial connection which is simple and fast enough as a temporary link, and save any TP program edits that way too.

I am not sure if my version of RoboGuide(PalletPro) will compile for old enough firmware for my sausage machine, but I intend to try that out on the beef robot. It runs good but has one TP anomolies I will eventually get to work on.

Paul