More robotic mayhem
Or never assume your fellow programmers are as good as you are.
We had a machine with an add on robot.
The robot had its own control program with move commands, gripper open/shut and a wait command that paused the program waiting for the machine to send a signal to execute the next bit of robot code
The machine had 2 commands.... signal the robot to start and........ signal the robot to start and wait for the robot to send finished...
Needless to say I programmed the robot to pick up blanks from the tray and put them in the machine according to the master plan worked out previously as the machine had control of the splash guards and clamping.
My colleague<snarls and glares over the screen> did the machine program, so we both load up the code ready for the first test run.
and hit the big green button.
The sequence was supposed to go
Splash guard open
Robot arm in place to grab part
Clamp release
Arm up /wrist 180 to load blank/arm down
Clamp
Arm ungrab blank and retract
Splash guard close
The actual sequence was splash guard open, unclamp,clamp , splash guard close, arm straight through perspex splash screen, 1st tool comes down and crashes into arm before someone manages to hit the big red stop button.
Post mortum(attentive readers will have already worked out what happened)
My colleague<glares over the screen again> wrote his code and decided to use the 'robot start' command instead of the 'robot start and wait for the robot to finish' command
Needless to say the machine ran through its set of commands before my robot had even got as far as deciding to try putting the part in........... then it tried to put the part in.
Solution(H2SO4..... if only it was that easy....and I could get away with it........) I wrote ALL the robotic handling code from then on