Freedrive

Freedrive lets you manually pull the robot arm into position.

On most robot sizes, enable Freedrive by pressing the Freedrive button on the Teach Pendant. Additional ways to enable and use Freedrive are described in the following sections.

In Freedrive, the robot arm joints move with little resistance because the brakes are released. Resistance increases as the robot arm approaches a predefined limit or plane, so pulling the robot into position feels heavier near those boundaries.

You can enable Freedrive in the following ways:

• Use the 3PE Teach Pendant

• Use Freedrive on robot

• Use I/O actions

Use the 3PE TP button to put the robot arm in Freedrive:

1. Quickly light-press, release, then light-press again and hold the 3PE button in that position.

   

Now you can pull the robot arm into a desired position, while the light-press is maintained.

Use Freedrive on robot to move the robot arm:

1. Press and hold the switch configured for Freedrive on robot.

2. When the Freedrive panel appears in PolyScope, select the movement type for the robot arm joints, or use the list of axes to customize the movement type.

3. If needed, define the feature type by selecting an option from the Feature dropdown list.

   The robot arm can stop moving if it approaches a singularity. Tap All axes are free in the Freedrive panel to resume movement.

4. Move the robot arm as desired.

    

During initialization of the robot arm, minor vibrations can occur when the robot brakes release. In situations such as when the robot is close to a collision, these vibrations are undesirable. Use Backdrive to force specific joints into position without releasing all brakes in the robot arm.

If the robot arm is powered on and the brakes are released, the joints can be moved by force. The force required to initiate motion depends on the Force Limits specified in the safety settings.