On Sun, 19 Oct 2008 21:43:49 -0500, "Karl Townsend"
wrote:

...

You are lucky. What robots, app, control?

Wes

its been 17 years now. I forget the model numbers. They were all six axis
G.M. Fanuc with G.M.'s version of a Fanuc control. The programming language
was very much like Pascal. Big exception, GOTO meant move to a certain
coordinate.

Karel? A couple years ago I got roped into resurrecting a GMF welding
robot that had been sitting idle for several years that spoke Karel.

I remember the computer was more wimpy than the super fast PC-AT
I had just got.

Sounds like the control I was working on. The programming wasn't bad,
as long as you didn't fall asleep while debugging.


We were assembling VHS tapes and went from humans to robots. over 50 robots
in the whole line. My little piece of the puzzle was taking the output from
25 molding machines and placing the parts in trays to cool before running
down the final assembly operation. The whole line was scrapped out with the
coming of DVD.

I had another customer who was making throw-away VHS tapes, for
promotional videos and the like. It was a pretty clever design -- the
whole cassette had only 6 components: the shell, two hubs, the leader,
and two springs. The shell had several fold-ins with live hinges for
the hub brakes, the door, etc. Everything except the springs was
polypropylene, so if the assembly automation went down, the molded
parts were diverted and reground and went back into the molding
machines.

They overestimated how long VHS would be around, spent a huge amount
on hard automation, and offered to give it to me about two years later
when their market disappeared. That must have been around 1998.

--
Ned Simmons