Robot controller?

[heepofajeep]

A friend just gave me a decommissioned, functioning SCARA robot. The controller is included, however, I suspect I may be up a creek w/o a paddle since I do not have the software, or the pendant.

That being said, I would love to be able to get this thing going. I attached a picture of the robot, and the controller. My main questions right now are:
1) can I do anything w/o the sofware?
2) is there anywhere I can get the software, or anything I can substitute?
3) what do I do with all the connectors? The two with check marks are the two easy ones, as they go directly to the robot.
4) are pendants universal, or robot mfg specific, and does anyone know where I could get one for this?

Your help and comments are very much appreciated!!!

[heepofajeep]

Anybody? Comments, ideas? should I just start tearing into this for parts? Any where I should be looking for more information, other than the obvious Google search (which turned up very little)?

Your help is very much appreciated!

[justCNCit]

I dont think you've provided enough info, from what I gather your controller controls the servos, which means it is the servo drive.

how old is the machine? it appears to have a serial port on the controller.

I would open the box and try figure out what that box does. If it contains both the servo drives & microcontrollers, it may only need a program uploaded into it to run.

if thats the case I'd say unless that company provides support for it you are probably SOL. However if the box contains only the servo drives & some intermediate relay controls & locks, you could probably retrofit that thing to work. However you will probably end up coding your own software.

from what I get you are looking for a quick solution. If that was me I'd basically get rid of that box, get a gecko controller and wire it to the servos. I cant tell whether or not thats a 3 axis mill, if its not then you'd end up writing your own control software and using a dedicated PC to run it. This would be quite a project but you would have a beatiful start.

I dont have a clue what that machine is. almost looks like a tool changer.

[heepofajeep]

Originally Posted by justCNCit I dont think you've provided enough info, from what I gather your controller controls the servos, which means it is the servo drive. how old is the machine? it appears to have a serial port on the controller. I would open the box and try figure out what that box does. If it contains both the servo drives & microcontrollers, it may only need a program uploaded into it to run. if thats the case I'd say unless that company provides support for it you are probably SOL. However if the box contains only the servo drives & some intermediate relay controls & locks, you could probably retrofit that thing to work. However you will probably end up coding your own software. from what I get you are looking for a quick solution. If that was me I'd basically get rid of that box, get a gecko controller and wire it to the servos. I cant tell whether or not thats a 3 axis mill, if its not then you'd end up writing your own control software and using a dedicated PC to run it. This would be quite a project but you would have a beatiful start. I dont have a clue what that machine is. almost looks like a tool changer.

Thank you for the reply, it helped to confirm what I thought was the case. the controller does have the Micro Controllers on board, so there is probably very little I can do, without the software.

FWIW, the machine is a wafer processing robot, which is irrelevant other than to point to the fact that it is high precision, but very low load. As it sits now, it appears to have 4 deg. of freedom-- it would be five, but one of the rotating links appears to be tied in to another. So I think I could make it work with just 3 axis if I neglected the rotating wrist at the end-effector.

However, I really can't think of a practical use for it, or rather, one that would justify the time it would take to get it working, not to mention the $600 I would have to spend for Granite Devices drives (pretty sure they are AC servos), and $$$ for other added expenses.

It would be cool, I just don't have a lot of need for a high precision, low load robot that needs quite a bit of work, lol. I am going to use the table for a plasma/torch table if I ever get around to working on it, so at least the machine won't go to a complete waste .

Thanks again for the help!