FAMOS robotic®, hereinafter simply referred to as "FAMOS" or "Famos", is a protected brand name of the OLP system from DESMA Schuhmaschinen GmbH, initially developed by carat robotic innovation GmbH
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What is FAMOS?
Famos is a complete set of several tool boxes for anyone who needs to program robots or design robot powered plants.
FAMOS initially is a so-called "offline programming system" ("OLP") for robot programming. The basic idea is that robot paths are created on a CAD drawing without the robot, and the OLP generates a valid robot program, which then only needs to be loaded.
Of course, others have come up with the idea. If you do 3D printing, you use e.g. a slicer that automatically creates the print path when you feed it with the appropriate STL file and enter a few parameters. This will generate a NC program, which is de facto standardized in its format and also would be understood by a NC milling machine.
However, each robot manufacturer has its own format, which is why the program files have to look different from brand to brand.
And FAMOS can handle all of them?
Not all, but many. And even at the same time in one project. But that's just one of the things that makes Famos stand out.
Famos is grown up. It has been used productively for > 25 years. It was developed by a company involved in the construction of various robot plants on a daily basis and FAMOS was "educated" there by the users. It has a conservative style and only exists for Windows, but it's really useful for it's purpose.
Above I mentioned a whole set of tool boxes. Let me explain:
The toolbox for the designer and project planner
- Import many CAD formats with the ability to hide and manage components
- choose from many robot types
- Sensible linking of CAD with reference coordinate systems, but also completely "raw" moving of the CAD itself
- Calibration and alignment of these coordinate systems, or even the CAD itself, without having to rely on estimates or judgment alone - but it can also be done "roughly" by judgment without being condemned to having to work too complicated.
- Easily create trajectories and points to move robots and peripherals roughly as needed later for the purpose of determining interference contours and reachability analyses.
- Easy creation of "correct" paths for a rough cycle time analysis (*)
- All coordinates can be easily changed, including underlying frames, in order to "just" approach the optimal cell configuration. The robot has to be 45 mm higher? The tool needs 7° more angle in Y? Try it out.
The toolbox for the first start-up programmer
- Recording important survey points with the robot and then reloading the resulting trajectory data into FAMOS to adjust the virtual reality to the real cell
- Built-in arithmetic operations for the linking of frames and other positional data to equip the robot system with valid coordinate systems.
- Visualization of whatever you want to do with the cell
- Extreme support for path creation - you just "throw" them on the CAD.
- Automation of many other "annoying" operations such as e.g.
- Averaging / adapting orientations
- Creation of lead-in/lead-off points
- renaming namespaces
- Creation of sub-cycles
- generation of symmetry
- Change path direction
- Changing path order
- Grouping paths to program files
- Transferring entire path clusters to other components
- mathematical distribution of parameter sets to path points
- Triggering outputs
- Rotation around virtual axes
- Scale path contours
- Shifting paths relative to the contour
- parametric tool translation and rotation
- etc. etc.
- For special cases even a powerful script interface (PASCAL-based), with which not only large amounts of data can be modified automatically, but also automation can be created for the future operator
- Additional axes and kinematics also for robots that are bad at it
- simulation and collision control
- Determination of the path times and (within the scope of what the robot can do) very fine adjustment of speeds and accelerations
- syncing between the devices
- Tracer and camera virtualizations to view virtual editing, including pick and place
- Function calls possible for all conceivable events in order to be able to evaluate the effects of peripheral data
- Reload taught paths
- frame handling inside the Windows-clipboard
- Logic blocks within the movement paths or paths without movement
- automatic initializations at the start of each path
- automatic transfer of generated modules to a dedicated post processor, if you need something like that
- automatic upload of the program files to an FTP server if required
The toolbox for the installer / operator:
- configurable limited access
- move single path positions and always see what you are doing
- scripts can be made available to the fitter, which work in an optimized way for his usual use case
- User levels and logs allow traceability of the changes made
- Arbitrarily sized "undo" buffer available
- Projects can be archived in one file, including CAD and history
Anything FAMOS can't do?
Yes.
Famos makes every effort to take into account the dynamic models of the manufacturers with different load data, but cannot do this 100% true to the cycle time due to its universality. So if you want to squeeze the last few milliseconds out of a pick-and-place application, FAMOS might not be your first choice.
And although you can put any logic blocks in FAMOS modules, it is not really an application to create a complete program structure. It always makes sense to create a supporting program in which the FAMOS modules are integrated.
Link to developer: FAMOS robotic®
