December 5 , 2007

Welcome to the December 2007 issue of Motoman Direct, containing news, product information, and updates from Motoman Inc.

Featured Products

NEW! WeldHound – Your Weld Process Watchdog
This new weld “tracker” provides comprehensive monitoring and reporting on critical aspects of the welding process and also automates recordkeeping for Motoman robotic welding cells...

NEW! Laser Weld Inspection
Ideal for safety-critical welds and manufacturers requiring Six Sigma production from their robotic welding cells. New cameras provide both laser seam-tracking and laser weld inspection capabilities, which allows the robot to track the weld joint and then inspect the final weld....

NEW! Motoman Advanced Robot System Networking and Communications
Advanced robot system networking and communications capabilities enable secure connections between remote PCs and Motoman robot solutions on the factory floor, providing simple to sophisticated cell control, monitoring and backup...

Yes, I would like a member of Motoman's sales team to contact me about the above product(s).

Corporate News

Motoman was named “Manufacturing Business of the Year for 2007” in the sixth annual program sponsored by the Dayton Business Journal and Soin International. Motoman also received the DBJ’s Manufacturing Business of the Year award in 2003 and Motoman’s President, Craig Jennings, received the DBJ’s Business Executive of the Year award in 2004...

Trevor Jones Joins YMC
Motoman Inc. is pleased to announce that Trevor Jones has joined the company as Senior General Manager of Yaskawa Motoman Canada (Missisauga, Ontario)...

Miller and Motoman cooperated to create a joint brochure. Motoman is the only non-ITW company to have joint marketing materials with Miller.

Click on the following links to see Motoman's latest ads:
NEW!!! SSA2000 - 15% Faster Welding. No Additional Cost.
"ArcWorld V"
"Customer Satisfaction"
"EPL-Series Palletizing Robots"
"Motoman Points the Way"
"Push Your Presses"

Editorials, Case Studies, & Articles

"Using arc welding peripherals to improve robot uptime and quality" by Chris Anderson – Penton’s Welding magazine - October 2007. Learn how $5,000 to $10,000 in peripheral equipment can provide several more minutes of production per shift from your $100,000+ robotic welding cell, leading to significant benefits...

"Robotic Workhorse Rides the Rail at Applied Engineering" by Mary Kay Morel – American Machinist - November 2007. A Motoman HP20 robot on a 20-m MotoRail loads and unloads a wide variety of aluminum parts from eight turntable positioners and four CNC machines...

Pack Expo -- The Wrap Up: She, Robot – Packaging World – October 30, 2007– Rick Lingle’s article talks about Motoman’s “surprisingly humanoid” DIA10 robot...

“Robots Sort Blood Specimens: Help American Red Cross Improve Productivity and Traceability” by Mary Kay Morel – Robotics Online - Dec.3, 2007 – This case study tells how the American Red Cross is using three Motoman AutoSorter II laboratory automation workcells to sort up to 10,000 samples a day to multiple targets...

“Motoman Taps Into Success With Non-traditional Markets” by Patricia Poist – November 30, 2007 – Dayton Business Journal – Special Report: Business of the Year. Page 8B. Article profiling “Manufacturing Business of the Year for 2007” tells how Motoman continues to outpace the robotics industry through innovation and tapping into non-traditional markets to diversify its customer base...
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Helpful Hints

Each issue of Motoman Direct includes "helpful hints" designed to provide bits of practical advice and programming tips that will help our customers maximize the productivity of their Motoman robots.

Compact Flash Card Trouble
Compact flash cards are exploding in size (the number of Mb they can hold), which one would think would be a good thing. Actually it’s not. While CF cards are getting bigger and bigger, the small ones are getting harder to find. Motoman controllers, especially XRCs, require the smaller cards (16 or 32 Mb) and will not recognize the larger ones. Compact flash cards were considered a consumable at one time due to their lack of tolerance to corruption. If a card was removed from a PC incorrectly, the card would become corrupted and rendered unusable to the controller, while the PC saw no sign of trouble. The only known fix for such cards was to format them on a computer with Windows 95 or 98. This is still the best way, but we have found a freeware version of software that can fix most cards. Recovery Manager, by VaioSoft, is software that is intended to make image type backups for recovery. It also has a format utility that mimics the formatting of Windows 98, while running in XP. The format utility works most of the time, but the ultimate fix is to have an image backup of your card (a complete copy of the disk made using special software), created while in a good working state. If your card becomes corrupted, simply reload the image and it is as good as new! To download this software, visit VaioSoft’s webpage at: http://vaiosoft.com/products/recoverymanager.html.

Macro Touch Routines
For many years, Touch-Sense has relied on the use of reference points and lots of global variables. Now with familiarity increasing with the Macro function, Touch-Sense is beginning to look more like a function than a call job. The detail edit screen allows you to register position data, removing the need for reference points. You can also set a shift variable if you want to shift the job, and there’s a line to place your resulting shift variable number. Using all local variables in the job, all P variables are open to use for shift values; none are used for calculations or place holders! Another added touch was to make the Touch1 job combined with the Laptouch job simply by adding the amount of offset into the Detail edit. These are just a few of the added features; many more are planned. For more information please contact Technical Support, (937) 847-3200.

For more helpful hints, click here.

Customer Satisfaction & Training

In addition to providing industry-leading, IACET-certified training classes, Motoman’s Technical Education Center also offers a variety of computer-based training (CBT) and web-based training (WBT) modules that can help you enhance productivity by teaching you useful programming techniques and/or shortcuts.
Motoman’s has two new WBT module available:

NX Interference Zones – students learn to define Interference Zones using each of the available methods on the NX100 Controller, and use instructions within programs that relate to Interference Zones.

NX Touch-Sense – students learn to:
- Insert Reference Points as well as FWD to and Modify or Delete a Reference Point.
- Use proper $PX and $B-type System Variables for GETS instructions.
- Use ARITH menu instructions ADD, SUB, CNVRT, SETE, GETE for Position Variables.
- Temporarily shift a job with SFTON/SFTOF instructions.
- Program using a CALL instruction to the Touch-Sense job.

Motoman's on-line Customer Care Center offers enhanced E-commerce functions and much more. Available 24/7, the site enables you to order spare/replacement parts, software, and manuals; check order status; and register for training at the Motoman Technical Education Center or for our growing offering of web-based training. It also features product information, technical resources and tools to help you manage your Motoman products. Please follow the link below to complete your registration and begin using the site!
https://ecommerce.motoman.com/opencms/customercare/motoman/index.html

Register Online for Motoman Training Classes
You can register for all Motoman training classes in the U.S. and Canada on-line through Motoman's website.

Trade Shows

If you missed Motoman's exhibit at Pack Expo in October and FABTECH/AWS in November but would like a copy of the individual post-show mailers, click on the following links:

Preliminary plans call for Motoman products and services to be exhibited at the following trade shows and expositions. If you plan to attend, please visit our booth:

ATX – January 29-31, 2008 – Anaheim, CA – Booth #4229.

Seatrade – March 10-13, 2008 – Miami, FL – Booth #TBD.

MetalForm – April 1-3, 2008 – Birmingham, AL – Booth #805.

AACC – July 29-31 – Washington D.C. – Booth #TBD.

IMTS – September 8-13, 2008 – Chicago, IL – Booth #6400.

FABTECH – October 6-8, 2008 – Las Vegas, NV – Booth #13049.

PackExpo – November 9-13, 2008 – Chicago, IL – Booth #1495.

G2E – November 18-20 – Las Vegas, NV -- Booth #TBD.

MOTOQUOTE PUZZLE

Decipher the following encrypted "MotoQuote" phrase (a puzzle in which one letter has been substituted for another) and e-mail the answer, along with your name, company name, company address, and work phone number to marykay.morel@motoman.com. On December 14, we will draw a winner from eligible respondents who correctly solve the MotoQuote puzzle. The prize, a plastic scale-model replica of a Motoman EA1400N “Expert Arc” welding robot, will be sent to the lucky winner.

Clues: Our company’s name and the word for our company’s primary product appears somewhere in the puzzle phrase. If you need more help, B=U and L=F.

ZCNXQAC IX RBIXURIC ST 2008!

ZSTP ST R NBOOCNNLBQ TCJ HCRZ JSIK

JXZQY-QCRYSTP UXIXURT ZXEXISO NXQBISXTN.