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How to Program a TM Robot to Do a Simple Pick and Place
Hello, this short video will help you do your first pick and place application with the TM series robot. My name is Ray Marquiss, senior application engineer with Valin Corporation. Let's get started.
After you watch this video, you'll learn how to create a program that does what we're going to see right here in this video. The robot’s just going to initialize itself. Check the gripper. Move over and pick up a part that's in a known position without using the camera. And then pick that part up. And Drop it off. And then it'll just repeat that cycle until you tell it to stop. So that's what this video is going to instruct him to do.
So after you start the TM flow software, you're going to be seeing this screen. And I'm going to be dragging in the video showing the robot here periodically. As you can see it, but once you're on this screen you just double click on the robot or the text below. If you click on that twice. The default ID is administrator in this default password is just blank. So you click on that and then you want to click on the “Get Control” button. If that doesn't work, you want to look at the pendant for the robot. I’ll show you here. And there's a manual/auto button. So you just hold that manual/auto button down for a few seconds and then let it go and the light will change from blue to green. Once you're there, then you can get control for sure and you'll be able to go into the project setting like this.
So we're going to click on the plus to start a new project and then give it a name. And then just say OK, and now you've got your first project started here. And the first thing I like to do is to create a point that's kind of neutral sort of out of the way of everything. And to do that, I'm going to use the free button on the robot that I'm showing here. There's the free button at the bottom, one on the camera. And then I'll just move the robot around to kind of get it into that first position, so that whenever we start the program it will kind of move out of the way of everything. Then once I'm there on it used the point button to teach that position. So the point button shown here. It's also on the camera. And then you'll see it dropped into the TM flow right there.
The P1 that it gives is the default name. That's not really helpful, so I click on the pencil to edit it. Going to the point manager, click on that name and then highlight it and give it a new name. Like initial position and then say OK and then don't click on the X here to close this window out. You want to click on the OK. It's hidden a little bit in my view and sometimes in the customer view. So then you see the name is updated with the new one. The next thing we want to do is initialize the gripper. We use a Robotiq gripper on our demo robot, so there are some nodes for controlling that gripper that are built in or able to be added to TM flow. I’m Going to grab the one with the gear on it. That's to initialize the gripper. Drop it in. It connects automatically to the previous node, so I'm going to then click on the pencil to edit it. And then click on the initialize or not, then variables and then click on the actual variable definition here and then the pencil you need to change this to true to initialize the gripper. Then then you'll wear out your mouse or your finger clicking on OK to go back. So click on OK. And then click again on OK. And then one more time OK. And then the last time on OK and that'll set that node to initialize the gripper when the program starts. Now we're going to add another point, and that's going to be the point that's over the part where it's going to be in its field of view. So we're just going to move the robot by hand using that free button again to get it over that part. I'll push on the free button and move it. And then you see something pop up this warning here. I accidentally pushed a button or pushed the point button. And I had something set wrong, so I'll show you how to correct that. You can see the warning, it's “illegal node placement”. I'll click on OK, I think I probably actually hit the button a few times, but I'll click on it and you can see that I've highlighted the gripper part up there, but what I really need to highlight is the OK.
Because when I create a point it wants to connect to the node that's highlighted. And it couldn't connect to that one, that gripper node. It needs to connect to the OK. So I'll push the point button again and it's going to drop in another point, we’ll edit it by going to the point manager, changing the name, and this will be something like above part. And then I'll say OK. And then remember don't click on the “X”; click on the OK and there you go.
OK, next we want to get the robot to be at the position where it can pick up the part. It was above the part. Now we're going to move it down so that it can pick up the part. And I could push the free button and try moving it down there to get it. But what I want to do is make it just go straight down. And So what we'll do is use the controller. Click on the controller link there and this brings up a way to move the robot from the software. The joints to Abbots, removing each individual joint. The base tab lets you move it like an XYZ theta type robot, so I'm going to click on the Z axis because I just want to go down to pick up the part. And I’ll jog that thing down. And as I'm doing that, you can see the numbers right here changing so you'll be able to see the value of the Z Axis change. And I'm going to stop that at about 10 millimeters above the level that the part is sitting on. When the gripper closes, it actually goes down a little bit, so you don't want to hit the deck and move it around or jam. So I put that in. Then I'm going to go ahead. I didn't mean to click on this, I'm just going to close that out and then make sure that that node is selected and hit the point button or the point button on the camera, on the robot and it's going to drop in a new point with those coordinates where the robot is currently located. So I didn't move it by hand, I drove it there. Then do our normal thing of changing your name to something that makes sense, like at Grip point or something like that, then we’ll say OK, don't forget to say OK here. And then we've got our point for gripping the part.
Now that we're at the place where we can grip the part, we're going to grab the node that is the gripper fingers being closed and just drop it in. It'll automatically connect to the previous node. And then we're going to go ahead and create a point that is above again where the part is, but we don't want to recreate that point. So we're just going to drop a point node in and I'm going to show you what happens if you do it wrong, because I've got the wrong node selected above.
I need to select the OK and then drop it in and it'll connect. Then we'll go ahead and change where that point is. Instead of creating a new one, we're going to grab another one, so. Let me show you how I did that. Again, I'm going to import points from existing points. And then I'm going to pick the one that I already taught. That's above the part and then say let's use that one and then say, OK. So now I'm going to…after I grip it, I'm going to move above the part. Next, I just want to drop the part off. Normally that would be done like in a tray or something, but I'm just going to move to somewhere random and say, OK, that's where I want to drop the part off, so I'm just going to push the free button, move the robot. Get it down until their fingers were about 10 millimeters above the surface, and I accidentally pushed a gripper button back there. We don't need to do that. I'll fix that later. Get it in the right spot. And then go back to the TM flow and delete that extra gripper part that we needed. Then I can push the point button on the robot and it will add that point into the flow. I’ll edit the name like we have on all the other ones so I’ll cruise in and go to the point manager. Give it a name like drop off. Say OK, and then don't forget to hit, OK. And the next thing we need to release it, so I'm going to grab the gripper node that looks like the fingers are apart. Drop it in. And basically that's all you need to do to do that. So if we look at the program from the top, we go to the initial position, test the gripper. Go to the part about the parts, go to point to grip the part, grip it. Move up above, they moved to the drop off and release it. And so that's our program. That's what we're going to do when we go to run the robot. Next, we're going to run the program and watch the robot move. I'll make the video screen a little bigger. And. I'll use the pendant. There is a play pause button on the pendant since we're in manual mode I can hit the play button, play/pause button.
The screen and the TM flow changes to show you the background of operating and then the robot will start to move and it's only going to move at that 5% speed. That's the default speed. Normally this part would be fixtured, but it wasn't, so I just have to move it into the place where the gripper can grab it. Then I'm going to move over to where the. Drop off is open the gripper and let it go, and that's the end of the program. The next step is just to make the program loop through that process of grabbing the part and dropping it off. I need to zoom out a little bit so I can see I want to drag and connect right above the above part node. So I'm going to zoom out. And I want to click right on that circle at the bottom of that node and drag it up to the circle on the top of the above part. I'm going to grab ahold of there and just drag up. The cursor turns to a finger. That's how you know you're in the right spot. Drag it up and Drop it on the top of that above node part. And then I'll zoom back out or zoom in so you can see. And now that's. Looping after drops the part off. It's going to look back up to the part where it picks it up. So this is what the program will look like once we run it with the new way. I’ll get the part of the right spot. Press the play button.
The background of the TM Flow changes robot goes to that initial point, test the gripper. It's going to go down and grab the part. Then it will go up. And then drop it off at the spot. And then it's going to move again. I have to move the part by hand because we don't have an abundance of parts in a tray or something, so just going to grab again. And then go drop it off so drawing that line is what made program loop to that point. You can see that I keep putting the part in the right spot. In a future video will show us how to find the part with the camera so that you can pick it up that way. If you want to pause the program, you can hit pause and notice that the TM flow stays the same and just stops the motion, and then when you're done testing, you can hit the stop button, and the robot will stop, and the TM flow, goes back to the view of the program.
That's all there is for this app. If you have any questions or are just looking for some help, we're happy to discuss your application with you. Reach out to us at (855) 737-4716 or fill out our online form.
After you watch this video, you'll learn how to create a program that does what we're going to see right here in this video. The robot’s just going to initialize itself. Check the gripper. Move over and pick up a part that's in a known position without using the camera. And then pick that part up. And Drop it off. And then it'll just repeat that cycle until you tell it to stop. So that's what this video is going to instruct him to do.
So after you start the TM flow software, you're going to be seeing this screen. And I'm going to be dragging in the video showing the robot here periodically. As you can see it, but once you're on this screen you just double click on the robot or the text below. If you click on that twice. The default ID is administrator in this default password is just blank. So you click on that and then you want to click on the “Get Control” button. If that doesn't work, you want to look at the pendant for the robot. I’ll show you here. And there's a manual/auto button. So you just hold that manual/auto button down for a few seconds and then let it go and the light will change from blue to green. Once you're there, then you can get control for sure and you'll be able to go into the project setting like this.
So we're going to click on the plus to start a new project and then give it a name. And then just say OK, and now you've got your first project started here. And the first thing I like to do is to create a point that's kind of neutral sort of out of the way of everything. And to do that, I'm going to use the free button on the robot that I'm showing here. There's the free button at the bottom, one on the camera. And then I'll just move the robot around to kind of get it into that first position, so that whenever we start the program it will kind of move out of the way of everything. Then once I'm there on it used the point button to teach that position. So the point button shown here. It's also on the camera. And then you'll see it dropped into the TM flow right there.
The P1 that it gives is the default name. That's not really helpful, so I click on the pencil to edit it. Going to the point manager, click on that name and then highlight it and give it a new name. Like initial position and then say OK and then don't click on the X here to close this window out. You want to click on the OK. It's hidden a little bit in my view and sometimes in the customer view. So then you see the name is updated with the new one. The next thing we want to do is initialize the gripper. We use a Robotiq gripper on our demo robot, so there are some nodes for controlling that gripper that are built in or able to be added to TM flow. I’m Going to grab the one with the gear on it. That's to initialize the gripper. Drop it in. It connects automatically to the previous node, so I'm going to then click on the pencil to edit it. And then click on the initialize or not, then variables and then click on the actual variable definition here and then the pencil you need to change this to true to initialize the gripper. Then then you'll wear out your mouse or your finger clicking on OK to go back. So click on OK. And then click again on OK. And then one more time OK. And then the last time on OK and that'll set that node to initialize the gripper when the program starts. Now we're going to add another point, and that's going to be the point that's over the part where it's going to be in its field of view. So we're just going to move the robot by hand using that free button again to get it over that part. I'll push on the free button and move it. And then you see something pop up this warning here. I accidentally pushed a button or pushed the point button. And I had something set wrong, so I'll show you how to correct that. You can see the warning, it's “illegal node placement”. I'll click on OK, I think I probably actually hit the button a few times, but I'll click on it and you can see that I've highlighted the gripper part up there, but what I really need to highlight is the OK.
Because when I create a point it wants to connect to the node that's highlighted. And it couldn't connect to that one, that gripper node. It needs to connect to the OK. So I'll push the point button again and it's going to drop in another point, we’ll edit it by going to the point manager, changing the name, and this will be something like above part. And then I'll say OK. And then remember don't click on the “X”; click on the OK and there you go.
OK, next we want to get the robot to be at the position where it can pick up the part. It was above the part. Now we're going to move it down so that it can pick up the part. And I could push the free button and try moving it down there to get it. But what I want to do is make it just go straight down. And So what we'll do is use the controller. Click on the controller link there and this brings up a way to move the robot from the software. The joints to Abbots, removing each individual joint. The base tab lets you move it like an XYZ theta type robot, so I'm going to click on the Z axis because I just want to go down to pick up the part. And I’ll jog that thing down. And as I'm doing that, you can see the numbers right here changing so you'll be able to see the value of the Z Axis change. And I'm going to stop that at about 10 millimeters above the level that the part is sitting on. When the gripper closes, it actually goes down a little bit, so you don't want to hit the deck and move it around or jam. So I put that in. Then I'm going to go ahead. I didn't mean to click on this, I'm just going to close that out and then make sure that that node is selected and hit the point button or the point button on the camera, on the robot and it's going to drop in a new point with those coordinates where the robot is currently located. So I didn't move it by hand, I drove it there. Then do our normal thing of changing your name to something that makes sense, like at Grip point or something like that, then we’ll say OK, don't forget to say OK here. And then we've got our point for gripping the part.
Now that we're at the place where we can grip the part, we're going to grab the node that is the gripper fingers being closed and just drop it in. It'll automatically connect to the previous node. And then we're going to go ahead and create a point that is above again where the part is, but we don't want to recreate that point. So we're just going to drop a point node in and I'm going to show you what happens if you do it wrong, because I've got the wrong node selected above.
I need to select the OK and then drop it in and it'll connect. Then we'll go ahead and change where that point is. Instead of creating a new one, we're going to grab another one, so. Let me show you how I did that. Again, I'm going to import points from existing points. And then I'm going to pick the one that I already taught. That's above the part and then say let's use that one and then say, OK. So now I'm going to…after I grip it, I'm going to move above the part. Next, I just want to drop the part off. Normally that would be done like in a tray or something, but I'm just going to move to somewhere random and say, OK, that's where I want to drop the part off, so I'm just going to push the free button, move the robot. Get it down until their fingers were about 10 millimeters above the surface, and I accidentally pushed a gripper button back there. We don't need to do that. I'll fix that later. Get it in the right spot. And then go back to the TM flow and delete that extra gripper part that we needed. Then I can push the point button on the robot and it will add that point into the flow. I’ll edit the name like we have on all the other ones so I’ll cruise in and go to the point manager. Give it a name like drop off. Say OK, and then don't forget to hit, OK. And the next thing we need to release it, so I'm going to grab the gripper node that looks like the fingers are apart. Drop it in. And basically that's all you need to do to do that. So if we look at the program from the top, we go to the initial position, test the gripper. Go to the part about the parts, go to point to grip the part, grip it. Move up above, they moved to the drop off and release it. And so that's our program. That's what we're going to do when we go to run the robot. Next, we're going to run the program and watch the robot move. I'll make the video screen a little bigger. And. I'll use the pendant. There is a play pause button on the pendant since we're in manual mode I can hit the play button, play/pause button.
The screen and the TM flow changes to show you the background of operating and then the robot will start to move and it's only going to move at that 5% speed. That's the default speed. Normally this part would be fixtured, but it wasn't, so I just have to move it into the place where the gripper can grab it. Then I'm going to move over to where the. Drop off is open the gripper and let it go, and that's the end of the program. The next step is just to make the program loop through that process of grabbing the part and dropping it off. I need to zoom out a little bit so I can see I want to drag and connect right above the above part node. So I'm going to zoom out. And I want to click right on that circle at the bottom of that node and drag it up to the circle on the top of the above part. I'm going to grab ahold of there and just drag up. The cursor turns to a finger. That's how you know you're in the right spot. Drag it up and Drop it on the top of that above node part. And then I'll zoom back out or zoom in so you can see. And now that's. Looping after drops the part off. It's going to look back up to the part where it picks it up. So this is what the program will look like once we run it with the new way. I’ll get the part of the right spot. Press the play button.
The background of the TM Flow changes robot goes to that initial point, test the gripper. It's going to go down and grab the part. Then it will go up. And then drop it off at the spot. And then it's going to move again. I have to move the part by hand because we don't have an abundance of parts in a tray or something, so just going to grab again. And then go drop it off so drawing that line is what made program loop to that point. You can see that I keep putting the part in the right spot. In a future video will show us how to find the part with the camera so that you can pick it up that way. If you want to pause the program, you can hit pause and notice that the TM flow stays the same and just stops the motion, and then when you're done testing, you can hit the stop button, and the robot will stop, and the TM flow, goes back to the view of the program.
That's all there is for this app. If you have any questions or are just looking for some help, we're happy to discuss your application with you. Reach out to us at (855) 737-4716 or fill out our online form.
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