Skip to content

Blending

A program with many waypoints stops at each one unless told otherwise, and every stop costs time and a jolt. Blending lets the robot pass near a waypoint without stopping: when the tool comes within a radius of the waypoint, it starts the next move, and the path rounds the corner.

  • The tool does not pass through a blended waypoint; it cuts the corner inside the radius. A waypoint where the tool must be exactly, a pick or a place, is not blended.
  • The blend radius is in millimetres of the tool's path.
  • A blend needs the next move to be known when the current one starts: in the Python API the moves are queued, so the controller looks ahead and blends.

In the Python API

move_j, move_l and move_c take r, the blend radius; r=0 stops at the target. move_p is the process move: a list of waypoints run at constant tool speed with automatic blending at every corner, for scan and dispensing paths. A tool action or a delay() queued after a blended move ends the blend there: the arm stops for it. The zig-zag example in the API's repository shows a raster scan with blends.

rbt.move_l([200, 0, 250, 90, 0, 90], speed=0.5, r=15)
rbt.move_l([200, 160, 250, 90, 0, 90], speed=0.5, r=15)
rbt.move_l([250, 160, 250, 90, 0, 90], speed=0.5)          # stops here

In the commander software

RBTscript has no blending: every move ends at rest. Make the path with fewer, longer moves, or with MoveCart through points far enough apart that the stops do not matter.

Comments

Found a mistake on this page? Edit it on GitHub · Report it · Get help · This page as Markdown · llms.txt · The whole manual as PDF