Siemens S7 & Yamaha SCARA

[CharlesM]

Has anyone used a Yamaha SCARA robot with Profibus interfaced to Siemens 300/400 controller? I have a profibus manual from Yamaha that has a simple example of starting and stopping programs in the robot but nothing about passing variables. I am using WinAC RTX and the robot will be a YK600X SCARA with RCX142 controller. Any information could be helpful.
Thanks

 

[CharlesM]

Anyone used a Yamaha RCX142 at all? I just got a PO from my customer last week. It looks like I will be going for 2-3 days of training. From the manuals I have it looks like I can map the I/O through Profibus but it only has bits. So I am thinking of doing some BCD back and forth to pass numbers. I'm not sure how the robot will handle this but I only need to pass 5 or 6 numbers. I think if I set up an array and use 4 bits as the index and 8 bits for the value then I should be able to loop through easy enough.

 

[Ken M]

Have you got the GSD file for the robot?
You may find that there are a number of data patterns it can use when it's been configured as a slave correctly.

Most manufacturers supply their devices' GSDs for free download on their web-sites. Get the Yamaha file and bring it in to the Hardware Config of STEP7. You may (damn, there's that word again!) be able to see more clearly how the PLC and robot are going to exchange data.

Regards

Ken

 

[CharlesM]

I have a call in to Yamaha but this is what the HW config looks like.

 

[CharlesM]

Sorry here's the pic

 

[Ken M]

Hmmm ...
There appears to be plenty of address space occupied by the slave: 48 bytes in and out. There's nothing at all to suggest that this is only bits as you said. Going by the description it may be that the first 32 bytes are expected to be addressed as 16 items of word-length data, and the remaining 16 as byte-length. You should be able to read and write these input and output areas directly exactly as shown in the address range column.

Have you any info at all on how the data in the robot is structured? I don't know whether you will have to use the instructions in STEP7 for consistent data exchange to this slave. Anything more than 4 bytes can not be moved using the traditional Load or Transfer instructions. It may be that with this device it expects to exchange all 48 bytes in a single message in which case DP_READ or DP_WRITE will have to be used.

Regards

Ken

 

[CharlesM]

You may be right. I have an example being sent to me. I'll post what they send.

 

[CharlesM]

Just an update

I know this is an old post but I find that when I search for something half the time all I find is questions without answers or follow up by the poster. So here go's

Ken was correct in what he posted. I found that the first set of address was used for bit to and from the robot. These are things like start program, stop program, program running etc.. and general inputs and outputs that can be used for anything. The example I got from Yamaha only showed these bits being used. The example helped but did not do everything that I wanted. So I talked to another Yamaha guy and he sent me a manual on Devicenet. The Devicenet manual shows how to send commands and get status from the robot. The Profibus module that I am using uses the same commands as Devicenet. The commands use the second set of address in the hardware config. So currently I am working with the commands. From the looks of things it appears that you can do just about anything from Profibus that you can do from the robot program.

I am currently working on some function blocks for Step 7 that will do all the comms to the robots. I had high hopes that Yamaha would be able to hook me up with someone that had the blocks but I have not been that lucky. So if anyone now or in the future is trying to talk to a Yamaha Robot send me an email I might be able to help.