# PLC Robotics Course



## EB Electric (Feb 8, 2013)

Hello,

I am in school right now and one of the courses they have us doing is an introduction to robotics. It is an entry level basic course with some pick and place robots, and some kuka robot cells. We have done a tiny bit of PLC programming before, mostly following a handout to make a program with about 10 rungs of logic at most. Now with this course we are put in groups of 2 or 3 with a robot and a blank program and told for example make the arm extend rotate right, engage clamp, rotate left, release clamp and return to resting position. It is challenging for me since PLC's are brand new to me for the most part, but I am enjoying it quite a bit. 

The task we had last week was to write a program to make the robot go up, 5 second delay, rotate, 5 second delay, extend, 5 second delay, rotate end effector, 2s delay, return from extend, 2s delay, etc back to as it started. This all had to happen from flipping one switch. We managed to make it work . I decided to use a timer, started by the switch contact closing, and then using comparison timers and figuring out what time range each output was on for, run it that way. Then we put in a rung that when the timer reaches 30 seconds it restarts the entire process. We added another switch as an input for this that way the additional switch for 'auto' has to be on or the robot will only go through the cycle once and then stop. 

I am wondering how I could make it now so that one more switch, could run the robot one operation at a time....as in flick the switch the arm extends, flick it again next operation robot rotates flick it again and so on. The 'auto' and one cycle function still has to operational also. 

Any advice or suggestions about how I could do this would be appreciated


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## KennyW (Aug 31, 2013)

Example. I literally wrote this in 10 seconds. You'll need to adjust for your switches, whether they're maintained, etc. But the concept of the sequence register is the important part.


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## Safari (Jul 9, 2013)

EB Electric said:


> Hello,
> 
> I am in school right now and one of the courses they have us doing is an introduction to robotics. It is an entry level basic course with some pick and place robots, and some kuka robot cells. We have done a tiny bit of PLC programming before, mostly following a handout to make a program with about 10 rungs of logic at most. Now with this course we are put in groups of 2 or 3 with a robot and a blank program and told for example make the arm extend rotate right, engage clamp, rotate left, release clamp and return to resting position. It is challenging for me since PLC's are brand new to me for the most part, but I am enjoying it quite a bit.
> 
> ...


i envy you.we did robotics too,all the aspects of rotation if i remember using matrix equations.but it was all theory.never had a chance to program even one robotic function we dont have these materials here.its nice you have the chance use it well


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## EB Electric (Feb 8, 2013)

nickson said:


> i envy you.we did robotics too,all the aspects of rotation if i remember using matrix equations.but it was all theory.never had a chance to program even one robotic function we dont have these materials here.its nice you have the chance use it well


It is pretty fun to mess about and learn how to manipulate them. You start with a robot which does nothing and within 2 hours you have it working doing a task, whatever you can dream up. It kind of wow's me leaving the class, thinking hey I did that. I have a 2 videos of 2 robots we programmed, not sure how to post a non youtube video up here.... :whistling2:


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## Safari (Jul 9, 2013)

EB Electric said:


> It is pretty fun to mess about and learn how to manipulate them. You start with a robot which does nothing and within 2 hours you have it working doing a task, whatever you can dream up. It kind of wow's me leaving the class, thinking hey I did that. I have a 2 videos of 2 robots we programmed, not sure how to post a non youtube video up here.... :whistling2:


please find a way of posting it here,or post it on youtube then provide a link here am intrested to see


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## EB Electric (Feb 8, 2013)

nickson said:


> please find a way of posting it here,or post it on youtube then provide a link here am intrested to see


Figured out how to upload videos to youtube :laughing: Nothing fancy, but cool for first time working with this kind of stuff!


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## Safari (Jul 9, 2013)

thats awesome EB electric.what programming language did you use to program the robot


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## EB Electric (Feb 8, 2013)

nickson said:


> thats awesome EB electric.what programming language did you use to program the robot


Both of those were written using basic ladder logic. The exact software, I am not really sure, I can take a look next class. The 2nd robot, the Thermo, we used a program called CRS3. We write the program on notepad and save it as a .r3 file and then the crs3 program compiles it and runs it. The notepad program would like like this:

main start1, up1, left1, approach1, approach2, rest1
speed(100)
move(start1)
move(up1)
move(approach1)
move(left1)
move(approach2)
speed(50)
move(rest1)
delay(1500)
output(13,1)
speed(100)

end main

That is a quick condensed version, but as fancy as it gets. The output was 0 for off and 1 for on, in this case it was the pneumatic end effector. It's quite simple to create. 

This is what we had the crs robot doing in the robotics lab today:

The scenario was we have a manufacturing client in china with a robot which needs programmed. We write a program here, then fly over and have 15 minute shutdown in the plant to debug the program and teach the points etc. get it all running up to par. The robot picks up the 'product' say some justin bieber/hannah montanna cds off of a skid, then loads them onto a conveyor. Once all 3 boxes of terrible cds are stacked on the conveyor, the robot picks up a tool, say a bat, and knocks the cds off of the conveyor smashing them to pieces.


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## Safari (Jul 9, 2013)

thanks so much,i have an intrest in robotics will talk more i will pm you


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