FANUC CRX robots are great for palletizing, and FANUC’s PalletTool 3 makes it really easy to get one of these robots going.
It used to be that you had to use PalletPRO to create your unit loads, but FANUC has moved all of that over to the Tablet TP in the new version. They’ve also changed how you teach infeed and pallet stations, and added some nice visualizations for the robot path.
One screen that is lacking is the Run screen, pictured here. You don’t get much here… just start, stop, palletizing status, part selection and a couple of maintenance options. The 4D Display is kind of neat, but it’s mostly just showing what I can see right there with my eyes.
Traditionally, getting a better operator interface meant adding an external PLC and a separate HMI panel. With HMI Forge, you can skip all that extra hardware.
A better run screen
Here’s a screen built in HMI Forge that shows a lot more information and gives the operator feedback on what’s going on in the cell. It still has the start and stop buttons and palletizing status information, but I’ve added a bunch of indicators for cell status: part at infeed, infeed stopped, OK to pick, pallet present, pallet not full, slip sheet status, vacuum and part on gripper.
Here’s a maintenance screen that lets the operator move the robot to perch or maintenance, test the gripper and reset shift counters.
Prompts for operator decisions
PalletTool gives you two ways to handle production decisions like which unit load to build, where to start, and what to do after a cycle stop or a dropped part. With the TP method, the operator makes those choices on the stock Run screen. With the PLC method, PalletTool asks a PLC, and the operator usually makes the choices on a separate HMI connected to that PLC.
A lot of CRX palletizers probably just use the TP method and live with the bare-bones Run screen. This integration uses the PLC method without a PLC or a separate HMI: the prompts run right on the Tablet TP, and a few custom TP programs pass the operator’s choices back to PalletTool.
On Cycle Start, I use the HMI Forge Prompts feature to get the cycle start data from the operator.
Prompts handle the other operator decisions too. On Cycle Stop, the operator chooses whether to continue, index the pallet or change product, or stop.
Part Drop Recovery tells the operator to clear the dropped part from the cell, then pick again, continue, or move the robot to perch or maintenance.
Change Layers updates the number of layers for the unit load on the chosen pallet.
Choosing Index / Change Product on the Cycle Stop prompt, or Switch Product on the run screen, brings up a prompt for indexing the pallet and choosing a new unit load.
Make it yours
The nice thing about this is that it’s just a starting point. If your cell only has a single infeed and a single pallet station, you can easily remove the pallet and infeed fields from the run screen and prompts so the operator never needs to worry about them.
If you have additional I/O you want to monitor, you can add new indicators with just a few taps.
You can even embed PalletTool’s own UI in your HMI and optionally disable the 4D Display, System Setup, Product Setup and/or Run tabs.
With the new Access/Passwords feature in HMI Forge, you can choose to lock down some of these screens or buttons (like the Move to Maintenance Position button above) to only the users who should be able to use or see them.
Get the integration
The PalletTool integration includes the HMI screens and prompts shown above, plus six custom TP programs: PLCCSTOP, PLCINDEX, PLCLAYER, PLCPART, PLCPDREC and WCELLMON.
To hook it up, go to System Setup > Advanced Settings > Production Control and set Cycle Start Control, Part ID Method and Response Method to PLC. PalletTool then calls the PLC* programs at those points, and instead of talking to a PLC, the integration’s versions show the HMI Forge prompts. Setting Cycle Start Control to PLC is what brings PLCPART into the cycle.
Other than that, the only change to the standard PalletTool TP programs is optional: if you want to use the shift counters, there are instructions for adding a couple lines of code.
You can get the PalletTool integration on the HMI Forge website.
