PAA Overlord and Brooks PreciseFlex arms

Schedulers
1

Does anyone have experience driving a PF400 Precise arm with Overload?

We have an extra Brooks PreciseFlex (PF400) arm which we’d like to control through an minimum cost approach. We have found that PAA Overlord is currently one of the most affordable schedulers, and PAA claims support for the PF400. However, an integration vendor is we work with is informing us that the PF400 is poorly supported by Overlord and has plate processing limitations and requires C# programming to make it functional. We also hear that every nest position would require manual teaching. We reached out to PAA but they have not responded.

Can anyone speak to experience with Overlord driving a Precise arm? Is it straightforward or kludgy?

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2

I have some PF400s but don’t use Overlord, and haven’t. I’ve got xp with other schedulers tho. I can say that if PAA doesn’t support it well, then it’s probably gonna be a rough go. I know PAA makes their own robot arm, the KX-2, so they are more likely to push and support that arm instead of the PF400. However, the PF400 is pretty ubiquitous, Overlord will probably work with it ok, it will just be harder than it has to be.

3

I think it would be great if there was an open source community sila2 pf400 driver out there to avoid these sorts of issues.

There are bits of code out there but having something solid would be good i think.

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4

C# programming is easy. Can you share the docs?

Also how many positions would you have to teach? It may not be so bad if you’re not on a rail.

5

I tried to set up a system like this 1-2 years ago, a simple two device system with a PF400 arm controlled by Overlord. It was not an enjoyable experience and I would not recommend it. The PF400 driver was not written by PAA, and it’s not really supported by them (at least not when I was trying to use it). The driver is very clunky.

We ended up moving to GBG.

6

Thanks, Alasdair, very helpful to know. A vendor is saying we should either purchase a KX-2 arm to work with Overlord, or instead pay much more money for Genera to run our existing Precise arm.

7

We have at Robiotec a light-weight software called PreciseControl to teach, operate and script PF400.
The scripting is done using python code which gives you very nice control and integration options and efficient stacker and hotel managment.
Using the PreciseControl we have integrated the following workcell:
PreciseCount: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5RVeXDyET4
You can see in the movie the software run dashboard.
Feel free to email me if you find it interesting for your needs:
shaik@robiotec.com

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