Struggling to Rotate About a Fixed Point

I am struggling to figure out how to make the ZA6 robot rotate about a fixed point. I was able to set up a tool frame with a z-axis offset, but I cannot figure out how to make the robot move about a point. If I am not moving the robot from one waypoint to another, how can I make the robot move (rotate, no linear movement)?

Hello @Charles_Janson

Firstly, welcome to the Tormach community! :grinning:

In order to have the ZA6 rotate around a fixed point, you first have to create a tool via the tool wizard (which it sounds like you have done already) and select that tool as the active tool_frame. Once the tool is selected as the active frame, you should see a new B/G/R jog control at the end of the tool, which will allow you to rotate and move the machine, and set waypoints with respect to the tool tip.

I created a short video of what this looks like. The robot controllers really don’t like using the video record function, so the video is a little choppy, but I think it shows what you need to do.

Programming tip: When programming rotary moves on the ZA6, try to break up the waypoints to avoid moving more than 45 degrees at once to make the waypoints transition more smoothly. You can see at the beginning of the video the tool tip jumps at the start of the program, that is because the end position is too far away from the start position, so the first move doesn’t appear as smooth as the others.

Demo rotate around a point.zip (6.1 MB)