| I was on vacation and had just returned home the Friday before Labor
Day. It was late, but I thought to myself, why not check the forum
and see if there is anything interesting to read. So I went there and started
to catch up. When I got to the Swap Meet section, there was a robot arm
for sale. I decided to write and get more information... might be interesting
to play with.
The person said that he had the manual, controller, robot, and stand
for $75 but that it wasn't working... the unit replied "ERROR
- NO VAL" when he turned it on. I didn't really have a clue what
that meant... but I figured that I might be able to get something working...
or at least be able to make a controller for the motors if they were DC
types. I figured that this was a small desktop type that was likely a class
training robot. So I headed out to meet him and pick up this "little
guy".
Well... as it turned out... this was a 300 pound monster machine. I
don't know exactly how I crammed it into my Pontiac Vibe... but it all
fit... and I was able to close the hatch. Okay... the feet were touching
the hatch... and the gripper was on the dashboard... but it did fit. Sort
of.
When I got home, I managed to (barely) get it into my garage workshop
and squeeze it between my desk and the front door. I quickly powered it
up and got a stream of errors having to do with joints past the limit points.
I figured out that the base must be JT1 (Joint 1) and by the time you got
to the gripper rotation you would be on joint 6. Two of the errors were
joints... so I moved the gripper to what I thought a good position would
be, and I turned it on again. Now only one joint had an error... joint
JT3... the elbow joint.
I pulled off the cover, found the shaft, and rotated it with a pair
of pliers. The motors have brakes so there was some resistance. After moving
it about 10 degrees... I switched it on and got only the NO
VAL error. I looked ont the internet and found a link to someone
else who had the same issue. I wrote to him and within an hour had the
answer... I needed to connect a serial terminal or PC emulating one.
I owe a huge THANK YOU to Alan
Kilian for the information he provided to me. Without his assistance
I would still be scratching my head and trying to figure it all out.
There is a port for the serial connection, it has a round connector
with 10 pins as shown in figure 1. The connection was pretty simple, jumper
pins 2 and 9 to set the unit to 9600 BAUD, 8 bits, 1 stop bit. Then you
connect pin-5 to ground (DB-9 pin5), connect pin-6 to TXD (DB-9 pin2),
and pin-7 to RXD (DB-9 pin3).
Power it up and you should see the prompt. Answer (Y) and press ENTER,
it will ask "Are You Sure? Type (Y)
and press ENTER. At that point... it will check for errors. If you get
(.) them mash the ARM POWER
button and listen for CLUNK! (The brakes releasing.)
~ I love that sound! ~
Now you can start playing with the teach pendent and making the robot move
around. I must say... this is a big, powerful, and by default... FAST machine.
Did you know it can rip a calender off a wall and shove a laser printer
right off a desk? Ahhhh.... not that I would have done that of course... |
