Fanuc 31i Control Manual.zip
Onofre Alamillo
Does anyone here have any experience with these controls? A friend of mine has been considering some machine tools that have this control, and I was curious what they are like in terms of usability etc.
Personally I love fanuc controls. and I have used all 3. I find siemans to be a bit of a pain and to have a lot of unnecessary features and screens to navigate through where the fanuc is a lot more straight forward and easier to find your way around with fewer sub screens.
Heidenhain, one of the most powerful conversational controls on the market, both mill and lathe. I have seen a lot of people over the years struggle with the control as they are a bit different than everyone else, but on the other hand I know guys(few) who are wizards on the things.
MGi has some functions that the "old" FANUC interface does not. Iindependant I/O Channel for one. You can have your I/O set to 5 on the Settings/Offset page yet while in MGi, you can press "M CARD" and it goes right to your Flash Card, or on the newer ones, you have the choice between USB and your flash CARD. To change G54 to G55, you can press 55 Alter and it changes. To change Y10.0 to Y12.0, you just press 12.0 and Alter. WHn you have your cursor on many g codes, it will tell you what it is in an area of the display. To select a program to run, in edit mode you just press O-List, highlight the program you want and press input. That program is now your active program. Copy, Paste, UNDO, yes you saw it right UNDO, and REDO. Lots more but you.
For 2 axis turning, siemens shop turn knocks the pants off the fanuc manual guide. Way simpler to use and more powerfull. It is almost as simple as prototrak. We looked at fanuc and siemens when we were deciding what lathes to get and laughed at the fanuc in comparrison, so we went with the seimens and havent regretted it.
But you wouldnt want to prog a milling job on the machine as it's not running and earnign you money while you're doing it (yeh I know there's background edit but does anyone really use this if you're doing complicated work?).
We had an issue early on with our siemens where it couldn't count (there was no parts count at all in the 810 - who'd have thunk, a lathe that can't count???) and it threw alarms occasionally on boot up.
The MTB sent out siemens and the tech was great and cured the bootup (although he swore he never touched that fault but 3 years on the machine has NEVER had that problem following his visit ) and he wrote a R variable prog we call within all progs that part counts and gives cycle time as well.
The only things that have failed are on the oimc machines (oldest of all) which has been an MPG handwheel, 1x spindle motor fan (on top of machine), 1x cabinet fan, and 1x capacitor (the main big one) on the control.
This person is only looking at purchasing two mills, (no turning). Siemens support here I believe is pretty poor as well. As this person knows Heidenhain well, and there are number of experienced Heidenhain operators locally, I'm thinking that he will be best with Heidenhain,
Again that knocks the pants off fanuc for programming on the machine and getting the job going. Half of the south of England has heidenhain for this reason, and it's big for 5ax because of it's ease of use (cycle 19). You can also get a stand alone programming box so you don't have to program on the machine.
Yes, my opinion is that the Heidenhain is the most suitable option. The last company I worked at had two borers from the UK, which were retrofitted with Heidenhain, and two five axis machines that had TNC 530i controls on them. They never missed a beat, and they were easy to programme.
So, I've been asking a lot of questions about user interfaces on R30iBs lately. This is because I'm a Fanuc n00b, and been assigned to (along with everything else) come up with an "HMI" for a new Fanuc, for a customer who needs a really simple, never-touch-the-pendant interface. But it also needs to be cheap, and put together quickly, b/c this project has a very... "compressed"... timeline.
What we've settled on is using the iPendant Customization methods (no purchased options required), and create a "web" page on the robot that can be accessed from the pendant browswer, and presents some "buttons and lights" to the operator.
Of course, I'm not just a Fanuc n00b, I'm also a novice at "web stuff" -- html, javascript, Ajax controls, etc. And just to ice the cake, the bulk of the iPendant Customization manual seems to assume that the robot has KAREL, and that whoever is reading it is already a KAREL expert. Well, I know even less KAREL than I do TP, and this robot doesn't have the KAREL option anyway.
Now for the good news: using a very simple sample HTML file that someone at Fanuc was kind enough to provide, I've been able to achieve a minimal proof-of-concept page -- once I put the STM file (Fanuc's HTML file extension) into my virtual robot's FR, I was able to add it to my Browser Favorites. The page has buttons that can actuate DOs, and I was able to pull "live" values from Registers and display them.
What I need some help with is figuring out what I can and can't do without KAREL, and how (if?) I can modify the Ajax controls to get live control of aspects of the screen objects -- for example, if I want a button to change color, or blink, based on a Register value or a DO state, or how to post long messages when SRs are limited to 23 characters.
I'm still waiting on my actual robot to arrive, but the virtual robot I'm using in the meantime in RoboGuide has $KAREL_ENB already set to 1. However, when I attempted to create a new KAREL file, I got a "compile" error message stating "this robot does not have KAREL."
Think if it works it will be legal, because for every option you need on fanuc robots they create a specific operating system. If you want to have one more option for a robot you already have, you will get a complete new image to load into the robot.
For a Toggle Lamp control you can set a TRUE/FALSE image. You could use Background logic programs to add some functionality. For example, you could write a BG logic program to blink a FLAG when a DI is on, etc. Then you could link a Toggle Lamp control to that FLAG to make it blink.
Sorry, I was not clear. The old way to create custom STM files was to use Microsoft SharePoint Designer and to install Fanuc's iPendant Controls. It looks like the new version of the robot controllers don't use SharePoint anymore. So it may be similar, but I haven't used it yet.
Sharpoint Designer can still be used for creating the STM files. The robot controller doesn't use the program with which you created the STM file, you even can create the STM file with notepad, if you know what content they have to have (that will not be a good option but possible).
No, I didn't know about Sharepoint -- I'll have to give that a try. The iPendant Customization manual talks about "Microsoft Impression," but that seems to be really, really outdated. So far I've just been using NotePad++.
Now, for a related question: The iPendant Customization manual comes with a .zip package of example files. I've been trying one of the simplest ones, and ran into something odd. It displays properly on the RoboGuide pendant browser, but if I point an external browser (IE 11on my RG host) at the same STM page, the display is oddly broken. What's the most strange about this is that, if I look at the raw .STM source, it's almost all just plain HTML -- the only "exotic" bits are the Ajax controls. I wanted to use an external browser to help with debugging, using the Page Inspection tools.
... It displays properly on the RoboGuide pendant browser, but if I point an external browser (IE 11on my RG host) at the same STM page, the display is oddly broken. What's the most strange about this is that, if I look at the raw .STM source, it's almost all just plain HTML -- the only "exotic" bits are the Ajax controls. I wanted to use an external browser to help with debugging, using the Page Inspection tools....
Unfortunately the newer browsers like Firefox don't support axtiveX controls anymore, and for IE you have to change security premissions for the robot homepage. But it's really not worth the time you have to spend.
Yeah, I'm mostly sticking to the pendant browser for now. Although I've had some good luck with the KAREL calls -- my STM page can "call" a KAREL program that returns an "HTML" file (really, just some ASCII written in the KAREL program) that my STM page can probably parse using "stock" javascript and CSS, and that works nicely with an external browser for debugging.
My next issue is kind of silly -- I want to get some of the UOP signals (Fault, Fault Reset, etc) to/from my HMI, but there's no access DataType for the iPendant Controls to the UOPs (that I can find). So, I can access DI/Os easily enough (especially if I assign them to Rack 0, Slot 0), and KAREL variables and system variables. I'm trying to figure out how to get around the UOP issue. It seems I can probably circumvent most of the UIs by using KCL commands via URL, but so far, I haven't found a good way to get UOs out to the HMI. I've been combing the System Variables manual looking for variables that follow the state of particular UOPs, but so far, no dice.
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