CircleMove with tool head orientation

dgraves510

I would like to execute a CircleMove with the toolhead orientation continuously pointed at the origin of a feature plane.  When I program the starting point (North), mid-arc point (West) and End Point (South), the circle move transitions the toolhead orientation straight from North to South.

I thought, well what if I were to update my TCP with a larger value so that the TCP and the origin of the feature plane coincided?  Then I could simply rotate around the z axis.  However, when I tried this approach, the software would not allow me to enter a TCP value > 500mm in the z dimension.

Does anyone have an approach that works? 

matthewd92

You could use the script command to set the tcp programmatically, then you can get around that limitation. 

We also did something like this a couple couple years ago by using script commands to step the robot around the circle. But we had the robot in the center of the circle and we’re pointing the tool outward

dgraves510

Thank you for the suggestion.  I am having some success with programmatically adjusting the TCP.

ledojf

Can you explain how you do that? thanks