Question about SICK Safety Laser-scanner for robot arm

[Lennytheman]

Hi
I have a yaskawa gp7 robot arm which I am going to use for machine tending with a cnc mill.
Is it a good idea to buy a SICK laser scanner for safety purposes inside the cell?
I see them go for pretty cheap on ebay
The idea is to make the robot arm stop if i go inside the cell
And then continue when i exit

 

[jstolaruk]

Yes, that's a common use for a safety scanner. Connect it the robot's fence input or if the robot has a safe input for "Pause". May have to do a little bit of trickery to restart on it own.

 

[parky]

Just be aware of a problem I had to find on a system with the sick barrier, was called to a system where for no apparent reason the light barrier kept tripping on it's own, I checked everything like noise loose wires you name it, bearing in mind this had been running for about 18 months without problems, I noticed that the system tripped sometimes when a forklift passed, turns out that originally there was another bit of plant next to the system, this was removed to allow for forklift trucks to pass, it was the amber beacon on the forkloift causing the trip, a quick fix was to place a screen (in my case a flattened cardboard box tied to the cell cage so the beacon would not interfere with the barrier), I informed them that my heath robinson fix should be replaced with something more appropriate, two years later it was still there.

 

[Liam Moran]

Be careful using auto restart. The SICK Flexisoft safety controller has some good tools built in to set up zone profiles. In my view it would be better to have a pushbutton outside of the cell which you can press to reset the unit when you exit.

 

[Lennytheman]

Thank you all for this very good info
I have now bought the sick controller and will install it along with my robot

Very weird with the forklift setting it off, good info to keep in mind

 

[bill4807]

Did you program in your exterior zone? Not to exceed the robotic fence.
Is this why the forklift sets it off..