I revel in every opportunity to learn something new. Many people hate having to go to training, and I am not one of those people! I believe learning from experts in areas that can expand my perspective and add tools to my toolbox, is invaluable.
This week I’ve had the opportunity to take a crash course in robot programming and it’s been a treat. Delta sent me and my coworker Hunter to take the CS8 programming course offered by Staubli Robotics at their facility in Duncan, South Carolina, just outside of Greenville.
Mr. Jim Cook, Air Force veteran and longtime robotics programmer, has been incredibly thorough in his curriculum and I’ve gained a lot of insights. We’ve covered various topics from basic robot operation, as well as programming structures and strategies for robot applications. In just a few days, we built a pretty intelligent robot application that picks up black and white pegs, determines their color, and places the black ones on a pallet while rejecting the others.
I’m leaving here with my head spinning with ideas for how to improve the applications I have back at the shot peen shop in Atlanta. We’re here to learn about the Staubli robots that are on our ultrasonic peening machine, but truly the biggest win is how Jim has opened up my imagination to improve the FANUCs in the shot peen shop that do most of the heavy duty work.
One topic we covered was creating custom user pages for operators. You can basically create your own UI, complete with it’s own user buttons that can control the robot and change how the application runs. This could be a game changer in the way we run our robots in the shop.
Thanks to Mr. Cook and the Staubli team, I’m heading back to Atlanta invigorated and ready to take our shop to the next level.
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