Running a 1.5 ton Industrial Robot With a Custom Open-source Controller part 1 

Definitely balls of steel having that arm inside where it's well in range to smash through all of those floor joists lol

you're an absolute legend

Jeez Louise, what a project. This looks like a full-time job

What a challenge, man! It doesn't sound to be a piece of cake, but is definitely worth the effort! And the knowledge you get from this experience is priceless 👌

This is amazing! There is a huge market for aftermarket Fanuc retrofits. If you decided to sell that people would buy them like crazy for old CNC machines running Fanuc drives.

Wow. Learning VHDL for a project like this is extremely dedicated! I am very impressed.

I'm a robotic student and your video is full of interesting informations, thank you so much ! I had never thought about doing something like that, buying real industrial robot is awesome and I look forward to see the day I'll have the space and knowledge to do what you did there 👍

First time I've heard of a practical use of FPGA-s that I'd be interessted in lol. Also the fact that you can get your hands on a robot like that is next level, if for nothing else, for practice. Just make sure it doesn't put a hole in the roof I guess lmao

Great vid that shows what you're up against if you decide to acquire one of these units. Unless you want a forever-project, $5-10k sounds like what should be expected.

I hope you will one day develop this project into a business converting discarded robots into useful machines

This is an insane amount of skill and effort. Good job, and that is a wicked project!

you are a hero! please keep us updated on the progress on spinning a custom pcb to control these, we use a few fanucs and i've always wanted to get a smaller one to tinker around with but i was worried about all the licensing bs.

Whoa, instant sub. You are straight amazing. Electrical engineering still feels like black magic to me.

This is what hacking means in today's world. The vast spanse of knowledge in various domains like electronics, electrical, mechanical, software, hydraulics, CNC, troubleshooting skills, what not is required to make this happen. Kudos to unkerfuffling so much complexity and getting a working model. Hat tip good sir!

Brilliant work! You stand among the great! Way to push through! You're helping drive manufacturing for the everyday guys. I build machines and could totally use that controller. I just drove the cost on a part from a $1.05 to $.09 and we make a thousand of these parts a day minimum. We need to load the machine once a month while we maintain the ability to pull 1,600 off a day. "So we never have to load it and we're able to pull in $$ish?" Yessir. I'm stoked... I started electrical and mechanical and then found manufacturing. Building with my hands man.

Respect. Mad skills. Thanks for publishing this inspiring adventure!

Just wow. Excessive overkill is right! This was inspirational. Thanks for making this video.

Nice! I was thinking that you could make the robot run faster by changing the mosfets that originally come with the o-drive. something that can handle 300V. You might probably have to design a new PCB for that, but it shouldn't be a big deal. This is really amazing and inspiring work!

Thats some perseverance man gj getting this far

Great video! I wish I had enough electronics/software knowledge to really understand everything you presented here. With the right attachments for the end of the arm, this robot would be handy for automotive rebuilders (imagine being able to quickly and easily manipulate the position/orientation of heavy parts during disassembly/reconditioning/assembly). It could also replace a miniature crane in certain applications, especially if the robot was made mobile by some means.

So much work. You deserve a brake from “what is wrong this time?” .

I wonder, why have i not seen this on LinuxCNC forums? Or did i ? 😃 Magnificent job on bringing the beast back to life!

HOLY MACKEREL. This is darn close to being an open source drop-in replacement for an R-J3

Thanks for sharing. An impressive debug and re-engineering project

love the video! I really want to make the jump from mills into CNC with robot arms like you.

This is impressive ! Good job 👍🏻👍🏻

this is beyond impressive, good job

the planned obsolescence of these huge indestructible machines is shameful.

This is amazing who would have thought to use odrive on such a big robot, genius

Awesome video, im in the same project right now, but i already started the motor swap

Wow! Very nice work. Thanks!

Amazing project!

This was a really great insight into the world of industrial robotics. I find it amazing how, in recent years, industrial machinery like this that could theoretically produce thousands or millions of dollars worth of product over its lifetime can be bought for the same price as a month's worth of groceries. The inflation rate of basic necessities has been far greater than the inflation rate of heavy machinery like this. It makes me think that a surprise North American manufacturing boom might be one of the things that can save our economy.

Such an awesome video & channel !!

Holy shit... Fantastic work. Thanks for sharing.

Excellent work, Sherlock!

This is the best project on youtube!

awesome work man!

Mad skills! Well Done!

I used to work for an integrator and used Fanuc robots for 5 years. For the past 23+ years, I have worked for Motoman ( Yaskawa). You have your work cut out for you, since you don't have the matched controller for that arm. Great work and way to DIVE in. Look forward to watching your progress. Cheers

Впечатляющая работа! Я долгое время работал с похожими, в буквальном смысле, роботами - Hyundai Hi5, Hi5A.

Great work!

I am not sure if I understood the issues correctly but anyway was an interesting video from start to the end and it seemed the robo was working at the end.

For the record, roboguide ships with all the controller firmware variations so you could have downloaded that and then restored from a virtual robot while using the trial version and saved yourself the custom driver but this is cooler

Wow sick!!! Dude you are a genius

Complexity of this sort is often due to layer caking solutions rather than working from first principles. Good luck on your project.

Nicely done.

Best toy 30-years old boy could possibly get.

Also, thanks for increasing the cost of robots as I was considering buying a robot. :)

wow, great job keep it up

Excellent video!!!

Nice work!

Amazing project and rundown of Fanuc servo interface. Thanks a lot for the video!

This is a crazy amount of work for a homemade fifi

Massive credit to you for tackling that box of worms..

I used to work for FANUC North America. If maintained, these robots can last a looooong time. Industrial customers can order replacement parts directly from FANUC or an authorized FANUC dealer with a ZDT contract.

I used that R2000 for mig welding at a factory. At floor level its only 4-5 feet tall. You could disable the machine guards to make adjustments. If you get in that things way, it will toss you like a rag doll. I'm 200 pounds!

Great Video!!

This is insane!

Amazing! I just saved a arcmate 100ib and r-j3ib controller with pendant from being scrapped. Id love to know exactly what 3phase converter and transformer you used, the vid still is hard to see. Wanting to use it for plasma cutting steel sheets if I can but am mega new to these robots. Any help would be appreciated. ❤

Great Job!

Parabéns 😀🇧🇷 ! São poucos que têm seu conhecimento.

I am encouraged to buy one now.

Yo. 8:42. From 0 to hero right there. Nice work!

channel name checks out.

Damn, good job.

seriously impressive ..

i'm a cnc machinist and understand cnc code pretty well but understanding and overriding robotic arms is kinda the next level above me. i know these are usually noncollaborative robots and not even sure if these come with a pendant.

This is impressive.

Was contemplating taking on a similar project, now I’m a little nervous.

That looks so cool :)

Love your work! Thank you for sharing!

there is a fanuc post-processor for fusion online, I haven't tested it personally, as I still can't get communication from any computer to the rj3 controller on the robot working yet.. definitely an interesting project though, good on you having the patience to go through all this I would have just bought another robot (to be fair that is probably part of the reason our shop has 3 idle robots at the moment though)

Seriously awesome!

Really impressive

You are a very ambitious young man! I used to work for FANUC as a field service engineer and your project would be so much easier with the correct software. Did you try to contact FANUC and give their support engineer the F number from the base of the robot? Tell them the controller F number and request an USB be sent to you. Don't tell them anything about this mad scientist stuff or they will not work with you. Just tell them that you bought the robot for educational and demonstrational purposes. The FANUC servo amplifier and controls are far more capable than any home built system. Kudos for getting anything to move safely. Yeah, don't mention that. Also don't talk about the disembowled control cabinet either. Siemens programmable logic controllers can interface with both a FANUC robot and also interface with Arduino controllers running Linux. Oh, using the FANUC servo amplifier allows collision detection which can prevent damage or injury from happening. Good luck to you and work safely!

Algorithm has blessed You lol. Great video, You should post an update or something :) What did You plan on using it for? Just for fun?

It's really owesome. It definetely needs a lot of time. Wondering java or c supports automation

Haha wtf I've used the ABB EGM interface and was already triggered on how much work it was to get it to run properly but this is a whole new level of external robot control

You are awesome 💯😎 I have some experience in yaskawa 6 axis robot i can release how much effort you put on it.

Guys who use a damn logical analyzer are just incredible

You have a massive brain - that is awesome :)

Is there gonna be more on this? I just purchased a arc mate 100i. I was planning on buying a matching rj2 controller and rewiring for 220v. With the thought in mind you can creat programs with the tech pendant.

Impressive!

I always thought there is some dark magic involved in running such robots servos as the dynamics are complex and you need smooth motion, small following error and reduce things like harmonics and etc. I read up a book on servos and the math was quite heavy :D

This is very interesting- I am wondering what prevents making a program that accounts for the difference between kinematics set A (controller) and set B (actual robot)? There are off-the-shelf 6 and 8 axis kinematics modelers, maybe more, if you know the length of each offset in Robot A (the controller is programmed for) and B (shown in your schematic) I think it would be workable. Or at least possible.

Very cool.🤖

I just bought two....anchored them in my garage 4 ft apart and I had them arm wrestle and the one loss because the anchor bolt came out of the ground.

What a rabbit hole...

Good robots, terrible company. Nice work!

Imagine programming one of those crazy industrial robots to play with a video game controller. Everything starts out quaint and innocent. But then the robot loses a life in whatever game it ends up playing, and the video ends with the robot violently bashing the controller and chucking it through a window. I genuinely think that'd be the funniest thing to watch!

Amazing work I love it thanks for sharing. I wonder if you gave up on the fanuc servo amplifier too easily. The optical fiber connection shouldn't be so difficult to tap into. Maybe it's just ethernet and you can wireshark the packets? Someone out there has information on that protocol.

I got lost after 1 minute but pretended to be smart by continued to watch to the end

Video stalls at 8:14. This is the second day in a row. Skip ahead a few seconds and it plays normally.

Cool video, many thanks for sharing! Question, could you get Linux CNC to output computed-torque feedforward? That would likely improve the motion performance dramatically without having to increase the feedback gains.

Great video. Where did desk chair come from?

Carefull with that.

THIS IS AWESOME !!!

Well made. If u need another robot, i have a few...lol, but in germany

Very nice, if you can come up with a package that replaces the original Fanuc controller boxes I'm sure it would have a decent sized market.