Plugging It In with Controller Boards

A robot con­troller is the brain of the entire robot­ic sys­tem. With­out it, a robot would have no way of know­ing the pro­gram­ming it need­ed to per­form its com­plex appli­ca­tions. Con­troller boards are found inside the robot con­troller, and they are the place where the mag­ic starts – where all of the wires and cables plug into the con­troller. Those wires and cables are the infor­ma­tion high­way from the con­troller to the robot­ic arm.

There are many dif­fer­ent types of con­troller boards, but in today’s USB mar­ket, many of them have USB ports that allow for easy plug-in and unplug­ging for replace­ment or repair. Each con­troller board can con­trol a vari­ety of items. For exam­ple, one robot­ic con­troller board may pow­er as many as 16 ser­vo motor sys­tems – the sys­tems that help the robot to move and func­tion prop­er­ly. All of those motors can be con­trolled by one small board in the controller.

One of the best things about con­troller boards is their ease of use. As men­tioned above, it is an eas­i­er inter­face because wires can be plugged in to a USB port, some­thing that is com­mon in sev­er­al dif­fer­ent elec­tron­ic devices today. This makes train­ing oper­a­tors and tech­ni­cians eas­i­er because the devices are more com­mon and have an eas­i­er inter­face. A con­troller board is also usu­al­ly well-labeled, so there is lit­tle sec­ond guess­ing as to what goes where.

Are you inter­est­ed in know­ing more about con­troller boards and their pur­pos­es? If so, give Robots​.com a call today. Robots​.com is a cer­ti­fied inte­gra­tor for sev­er­al dif­fer­ent robot­ics com­pa­nies, includ­ing Fanuc. Motoman, KUKA, Uni­ver­sal Robots, and ABB. Our staff will work with you to ensure that you have the best robot­ics sys­tems avail­able for your facility.

For more infor­ma­tion, con­tact Robots​.com today online or at 877−762−6881.