Preventive Measures

 

Ignoring Robot stops is considered abuse of the robot which voids the warranty.

These faults can be hidden from view under the following two circumstances:

  1. Personnel simply resetting a fault without review of why the fault has happened.

Ignoring robot stops masks fault detection, which can increase the risk of injury.

  • Pay careful attention to robot stops.
    Learn why they happen to improve your programs and preserve fault detection.

Robot stops must never be acknowledged and reset automatically, it must always be a deliberate action by a user to resume after a robot stop.

In general, robot stops are designed to inform the user that the robot has stopped due to an external event such as hitting an obstacle or similar. In case the robots are pushed close to the limits, the robots can generate robot stops to indicate that they are not capable of following the desired trajectory.  After a robot stop, the following must be done before resuming operation:

  1. If there has been a collision or similar:
    Remove the obstacle and ensure that operators are out of the way before resuming operation.  See Section 2 of Service Manual (see link below).
  2. If there has been NO collision or similar:
    The robot is operating too close to the limits, the application should be adjusted to reduce the load on the robot, for instance by reducing accelerations, by correct use of blends or similar measures.

Robot stops are indications of issues, including program or production issues – not only safety issues.  An application which results in daily robot stops is not designed correctly and needs to be modified.

  1. If an automatic acknowledgment and reset of a robot stop has been programmed – no one will see the robot stop. 

Automatic acknowledgment and reset of robot stops masks faults that will lead to a failure condition.

  • When there is a robot stop, verify the cause.
    If there is no collision, adjust the program

If an integrator has set-up the application program to do automatic acknowledgement and reset of robot stops, the customer should contact the integrator change the program immediately, as such override voids the product warranty and masks fault detection.