I am having to leave town Sunday for work but let me know when youāll meet next and Iāll try and make it.
Meeting this Sunday, 4/15, 3 p.m. - 6 p.mā¦
I am so late to this party - serves me right for not keeping up.
Iāll be there!
We got all 6 axis working on April 10th or 11th for a little bit & removed hardware errors. Now just software error on 1 or 2 motors
Is that the second arm (the one stored away) or was there a regression with the primary arm?
@kevin I think you may be confused with the larger arm. Weāve had the 6-axis moving on the smaller robot for a while now.
Good news. Found the electrical diagram to the controller. We have CS7MB the electrical diagram is for CS7, got this from the london hackerspace website.
Itās now in the blue binder.
The smaller arm has an issue every so often with the enclosures for motors triggering (itās usually the encoder for motor #1 or #2 floating). The cable connecting the arm to the controller eventually needs to be rebuilt, but for now it should be holding. If you open the hardware diagnostics and see the position value fluctuating wildly then itās the floating encoder. This also sometimes happens when one takes off the back panel; the logic board attached on the back panel has a lot of PCB connectors that do not have locking tabs. There is a two wire green PCB connector in the lower right quadrant (facing the board) that tends to come loose most readily. IIRC itās labeled āY22 / Y21.ā
If thatās not it and itās the big cable, sometimes propping it up with the wooden block just before it connects to the arm solves the issue (loose pins) without taking it apart. Last time I moved the arm I didnāt need the wood, but I didnāt make it out yesterday to the meetup and see for myself whatās going on.
-Jim
to all: visible in the second photo smack in the middle, though you may have to enlarge to see it clearly.
To clarify to people, green connector but it uses blue wire 
So last week we removed and replaced one of the pins number 25 that was having the issue with the floating encoder value. We got it to stop fluctuating completelyā¦have you seen this continue to be a problem in the past week? In our experiments last week and this week it seemed to have been solvedā¦ could u elaborate on the motor triggering issueās? ā¦one thing i have noticed is that various axes rather easily slip from their limit position directly into over travel. Triggering a fault not sure why thats happening other than the limit switches may be bad and the over travel switches are fineā¦(not positive there are min and max switches in addition to over travelsā¦simply inferred because my robots have limits and over travels) probably should read the manual completely.
Iāve seen the motor enclosure issue in the past week; one of the nights we took apart the cable and reassembled it and it worked fine; others were those two pins (Y21/Y22) coming loose form the logic board.
Seems both are somewhat problematic. That cable has been heavily abused and i wouldnāt be surprised if there was a faulty wire in-line as well. The logic board lacking locking connectors certainly doesnāt help.
Been digging around and it looks like this can become an #IoT device since it supports MODBUS
All one would then need to do is connect a Raspberry Pi thatās running a REST API Server which is communicating to the robotās controller via pymodbus
Throw telegraf on the Pi and one has stats and monitoring for the robot too.
Yeah i can easily see the torn up armored cable
Jacket gouging those wires somewhere it would be nice if the cable could be separated into 3 cables with quick connectors on each cable end so the whole thing could be easily moved/ routed/ stored cuz i dont think that cable is meant to be moved as much as we move itā¦more like set up in a work cell and not messed with for months to yearsā¦on wednesday i believe a fellow named james will be there to work on the unit he actually has a working stabuli ā¦sounds like an asset to the project.
Also an update on my screwings arounds with the larger arm with the messed up 3rd axis. for any of you that werenāt aware fire up axis three on larger arm and it makes an awfullllll grinding noiseā¦I and others have opened it removed the motor and inspected the main drive gear attached to the motor and the main drive gear within the gear reducer assembly. first off the gear reducer assembly is supposed to be oil filledā¦it was mostly emptyā¦wet with oil but mostly empty. moving the 3rd axis with no motor everything looks and sounds fine. disengage the brake on the motor and it spins freely. we tried reassembly, same result. My theory is that the two bevel gears are ever so slightly out of mesh resulting in the grinding. I attempted to disassemble the gear reducer assembly until I realized to even remove the cover meant complete disconnection of the forearmā¦i.e. getting very deep into a complete teardown which at the time I was not looking to get into at that momentā¦not generally opposed just not prepared on that day. I Tested my out of mesh theory by removing the drive gear from the motor, the drive gear is held at a very tight tolerance away from the motor by a shim washer of a precision thickness. This washer also acts as a barrier between the oil filled environ, a seal and the brake assembly compartment from what I can tellā¦the brake assembly seemed to be oilyā¦no Bueno but not terribly bad so long as it doesnāt get into the rotor/stator( I donāt think oily rotors and stators are good but due to its brushless construction might not even be an issue)ā¦but I am unsure if it has done this. I replaced this shim washer with a regular old washer of about twice the thickness pushing the bevel gear out about a 64th more. I reassembled and we tested it. The noise improved but added pressure on the mesh seemed to somewhat impede movement. The noise reappeared at absolute minimum. I left the arm in this state until a general consensus could be made as how to proceed. The precision washer is bolted to the side of the arm in the interior marked āimportantā. Thoughts on how to properly repair the unit?
Also are we meeting this sunday?
Yes we are meeting this Sunday, 4/22, 3 p.m. - 5 p.m. in the Science Area.
https://calendar.dallasmakerspace.org/events/view/5847
Thanks @Dawsmart for coming out taking pictures of our equipment. Wiki coming soon!
HELP WANTED
We are looking for someone who would like to document our findings. You donāt have to have a background in robotics. We would like for you to come out on Sundays from 3 p.m. - 5 p.m., document our findings, create/update the wiki. Contact me if you are interested or stop by our work sessions and see if this is something you might be interested in.
We are meeting again this Sunday 4/29, Weāll take apart the Controller and see if we can map out the safety crcuit board.
TLDR:
My name is Christopher Thomas, and I am the Automation Coordinator/Instructor for Dallas County Community College at the Bill J. Priest Institute Campus. I specialize in Automation and Robotics Integrations, Instruction, and Maintenance. Iām actually a former member of the DMS back when yāall were at the Monroe location. (2013)
I also co-own a camera control company that utilizes a Staubli RX90B-Lā¦
I was contacted by James Staud at Cloud 9 Perception, with an inquiry for assistance.
I am familiar with the Staubli CS7B (and Adept Controllers/V+/AIM/AdeptWindows), and would be willing to assist in getting it up and running.
What seems to be the primary problem?
You can contact me at [email protected], or via here.
Regards.
PS: Hereās my lab:
