32i-MA Control and LRMate Robot

[abhthree]

Hello,

We recently purchased a new Doosan machine with a 32i-MA Fanuc control. The machine was purchased to replace a Haas machine. Currently the Haas machine has a Fanuc LRMate 200ic Robot attached to it that loads and unloads the pieces we run on the machine. We did the integration in house and send a basic signal through some relay boards to the machine, basically electronically pressing the cycle start button every time the robot has loaded the part.

We are planning on upgrading the entire system with our new machine and would like to communicate between the control and the robot through ethernet. In the documentation I have read from Fanuc/Doosan they have an I/O Link package that they recommend to do the pairing. Does anyone have any words of wisdom on these packages? Our goal is to use the robot as the master and the machine as the slave. We would like to connect both to our internal network so that we can get information from the machine and the robot (number of parts run a day).

The machine runs a family of parts and the goal is to be able to have the robot be able to signal the machine to switch to a different program. I know how to get the signal into the robot, we just don't have any experience with a brand new machine tool!

Thank you in advance.