ABB Load Program to the Robot

After spending weeks preparing your program, the moment has come to load it onto the newly installed robot.

However, don't be fooled into thinking it's as simple as a single click.

The procedure can vary depending on the robot's brand. In this guide, I'll walk you through the process to load program to ABB robot and highlight important considerations to avoid any mistakes.

 

Use Virtual Robot Backup to Restore Real Robot in One Click?

At first glance, you might think: "Okay, I'll do a full restore to load the entire program in one click."

But be cautious: even though this may work, there are significant risks that I would prefer not to take.

• You may encounter incompatibilities if the RobotWare version or installed options on the virtual robot prepared at the office are different from the real robot.
• Overwriting the robot's serial number could lead to complications.
• Worst of all, the axes calibration values may be lost.

In short, regardless of the robot brand, I advise against restoring the robot with a program you prepared at the office, except if you prepared your program from a backup of the real robot. But that's rarely the case, the robot is installed and powered up after you have finished all the programming work at the office.

 

How to Load a Program to ABB Robot?

Here is the procedure I use.

 

Create a backup of the real robot

Before loading any program, take a backup of the real robot. This will preserve its initial state when first started up. Save this backup on your company's network.

 

Create a backup of the virtual robot

Create a backup of the virtual robot that you have worked on. This backup will help you to load the program files, check configuration files and compare real and virtual robot backups.

 

Load the inputs and outputs configuration

Now, it's time to load IO configuration.

In order to avoid making mistakes or erasing some configuration, copy the two EIO files (located in SYSPAR folder) into a new folder. One is from the virtual robot, the other one is from the real robot.

Use Winmerge to compare these files, then add the necessary signals for you application, and if applicable, cross connections, system signals and fieldbuses definitions. You copy the lines from the virtual robot to the real robot.

Use RobotStudio to load the EIO.cfg file into the configuration. Then restart the robot.

Upon startup, check for any errors in log.

Here you can find a blog post about Winmerge : Must-Have Tools for Roboticists.

 

System parameters

If you've made specific configurations in the system parameters, such as Motion and Controller settings, apply those changes directly on the real robot via Robotstudio.

 

Load program and system modules

Using the backup of the virtual robot, load the program and system modules to the robot via Robotstudio.

 

Check program

Before finalizing the process, click on "Check Program" to ensure there are no errors in the program.

 

Backup

Lastly, create a backup of the loaded program for easy restoration if needed in the future.

By following these steps, you can confidently upload your program to the brand-new robot without risking potential problems.