Reloading and Recalibrating the PUMA Robot

If the PUMA robot controller has been power-cycled, then it will need to be recalibrated. The PUMA will not need recalibration if kiewa has been rebooted.

• Turn on, or power cycle, the controller power (using the big toggle switch on the front of the controller).

• Toggle the small "run/halt" switch in the small top-facing panel at the upper right corner of the controller front.

• Now open a window on kiewa and run

     % load260
     

  This should take maybe half a minute; it will print some messages. When it is done, you will hear the puma teach pendant beep twice.

• Now free the puma260 and put it in it's nest. To do this, run

     % free
     

  If robot arm power is not on, you will be prompted to turn it on by hitting the black button on the little black power box. The white toggle button will need to be switched to the left in order for this to work (switching the white toggle to the right turns off the power).
  Once the program is running, enter free all after the FREE> prompt. This will free all the robot's joints, after you confirm the command by hitting either Return or the "free" button on the robot's teach pendant. Important: Make sure some one is holding the robot when you do this or it will fall.
  Put the robot back in the nest (this is a bit tricky, I will show you how to do this).
  When moving the robot around using the free program, you might get a velocity error exception. If so, just ignore the problem and try again.
  One the robot is in the nest, type

     % pumacal
     

  This will drive the robot out of the nest, move the joints around a little, and then move the robot into the "park" position.

• Now disable automatic power-off on the robot (so that puma power won't die if the server dies)

     % talk260
     

  This connects you to the controller console line.
  Enter 'D'
  You should get a message "Power off disabled"
  To exit the program, type ~, then when you get the termlink prompt, type quit.

• Move the puma to a good starting location, like rcclpark

     % move to rcclpark
     

Moving the PUMA Robot

The Puma robot can be moved using the move command described in ACMECommandLine.

The Puma can also be moved manually by putting it into a limp mode using the command

    % zerograv

This will limp the Puma's joints, but with gravity compenssation so that it won't fall, allowing you to move it around like a luxo lamp.

Controlling Motor Power to the Robots

There are two boxes that control motor power to the robots: one big one for the gantry and stages, and a small black one for the puma.

Robot motor power should be turned off at the end of the day.

To turn the gantry on, hit the yellow button on the big power box. When you do this, the pan-tilt unit will swivel about for a few seconds while it calibrates. Be sure that the gantry head is in a free space to allow this motion.

Hitting the red button on the big power box turns the gantry off.

To turn on the Puma, you hit the black momentary button on the little black power box. For this to work, the white toggle "off" switch needs to be positioned so that it's lever is facing left.

To turn the Puma power off, flip the white toggle switch so that it's lever is facing to the right.

-- WolfgangHeidrich - 24 Nov 2005