Powering a wireless e-stop from the control box

Technical Questions
1

Is it advisable to power a wireless e-stop from the control box of an UR-16e?

If so, what is the best way to go about it?

Thanks,
Matt

2

Your question is not entirely clear. If you mean that the wireless PB generating the estop is powered (presumably by robots 24v) by the robot controller then I would say maybe. It depends on your electrical design and risk assessment. In any situation of using a wireless estop there are two things to remember.

  1. The robot is not going to respond to a truely wireless estop signal (the protocols don’t currently exist in a UR robot controller). The estop source signal needs to be hard-wired into the robots estops.
  2. IF the power supply (whatever it is) powering the estop circuit goes OFF then the entire estop chain of the overall system needs to be driven into an estop state.
3

We have one of these:

I was able to wire up the e-stop receiver to the e-stop connection of the control box. Since this e-stop handles the wireless signals, will the control box treat it the same as a wired e-stop? Does this fulfill your requirement #1 above?

We also ended running the e-stop receiver power through one of the digital output connections on the control box. It seems to work OK, but we do have to go in and turn on that output via the software. This isn’t a big deal for us right now, as we’re just getting started. When I turn the digital output off, the software indicates that we have entered the e-stop state. Does this fulfill requirement #2?

Are we doing something dangerous?

(Eventually, we will power the e-stop receiver from platform power independent of the UR-16, we wanted to get started, and the rest of the platform isn’t ready yet)

Also, what is “PB”?

Thanks,
Matt

4

FYI, this is the reciever:

5

As @bba stated above you need to have the receiver leads connected directly to the Emergency Stop terminals (I believe they are dry contacts circuits) and instead of using a Digital I/O Terminal use the internal 24V power supply of the robot this should always remain ON. Check out image below:

image
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If you are adding this to a system with several devices you will need a safety rated PLC to handle E-Stops to the UR and other devices which wiring looks completely different than wiring shown above (use the configurable I/O terminals and some settings in installation safety settings to communicate with the PLC)

Again as @bba stated this is up to the risk assessment and electrical design.

6

Hi,
Yes, this FortRobotics device looks suitable and safe to me. As long as it’s wired to EI0 and EI1 of the robot it should work ok. So it seems you satisfy point #1. With regards to point #2 this really depends on your risk assessment. If this remote estop is the only estop (besides the robots teach pendant estop) AND the robot is the only device in the system that needs to stop when there is an estop, then it seems you are ok. PB is an abbreviation for push button.