Is it possible to run a large G-Code remote toolpath from the thumb drive? Like a 4.5 MB machining toolpath? Does anyone know the largest program that can be loaded into the control? We are using a UR10e…thanks!
On CB controllers our experience is that a program more than a few thousand lines will take really long to start playing and very often crashes the controller. Also you wont be able to run straight g-code since you must convert that to urscript code first, and likely want to go through a simulation stage to make you sure you dont hit any singularity or exceed any kinematic limits, you cant simply replace the gcode commands with urscript syntax expecting it will just work.
I dont know how the e-series behave with very long programs, I guess 4.5MB brings you close to a hundred thousand lines?
You might be able to write a script that could load dynamically a csv file or similar with a list of waypoints and loop through them to create a path on the fly but then you would still need to validate the toolpath beforehand as you could quickly crash/reach some limits, or be constrained to a working range you are sure is reachable. You could also stream the toolpath from a computer over ethernet, that would allow for infinitely long programs.
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I have been able to get a program with 70,000 lines of G-code to run cleanly…I loaded it onto the control with FTP and only takes a few moments to load to run. The g-code file size is about 1.5 MB. I was also able to load onto the control with FTP a 3.5 MB file. However this program would not execute. The error code was a bit confusing: Red X The file is valid, even though it would not run. The G-code was clean, so I’m not sure if it was a size issue or not. hi11 has mentioned that files could be streamed from my laptop…I’m not sure how to setup an “e” control to run by DNC. Every time I’ve tried to “Run on Robot” a program from my laptop, the robot movement has been very jerky…not smooth like the URCap remote toolpath function on the control executes. Any help with running large g-code programs on a UR10e would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
The e-Series has several plug-in’s that make this extremely easy!
To my knowledge there is no desktop client app to control a UR bot and execute/follow a gcode trajectory over the realtime ethernet connection, we prototyped something once where we executed the gcode on the laptop and streamed the TCP to the robot so that it was essentially mirroring the virtual machining op, but I dont know of existing out-of-the-box solution, something similar to KUKA.CNC.
@anjo If i’m not wrong, all these solutions do not simulate the robot kinematics before generating machine code, so there is always a risk when executing these blindly to crash or enter into a singularity/exceeding kinematics limits. We evaluated the Fusion360 for example and it is only a naive post-processor with proper URScript syntax output. It will run, but at no point is the robot motion simulated beforehand to make sure it is safe to run, as Robotmaster or SprutCAM Robot do. For a short program or something that will be run many many times it might be acceptable to run it slowly while monitoring the process, but on one-off jobs that might take multiple hours to process it’s simply not an option to run blindly the generated code without going through a sim stage. It likely can work ok as long as the process enveloppe is never exceeding known position limits, but it would be quite dangerous to simply generate and run this straight, no?