Teach Pendant (iPendant)

The teach pendant is the operator's live handle on the robot. Jog keys, an enable switch, a hold-to-run deadman, and an emergency stop button all wire through a shielded cable back to the controller. On R-30iA and R-30iB cabinets it ships as the iPendant, with a color touchscreen and a soft-key layer over the physical keys.

Inside the shell sit a small SBC-style board, a display module, the membrane keypad, and the two safety switches. The pendant reports the state of the enable switch and the deadman to the controller continuously, and either one dropping out mid-jog triggers SRVO-003.

Trouble shows up in three patterns. Dead pixels or ghost touches on the screen, keys that stick or stop registering, and intermittent SRVO-002 alarms every time the operator lifts a finger. That last one usually traces to a worn deadman switch or a frayed cable at the strain relief.

Selection means matching the pendant to the controller generation and cable style. An R-30iB Plus pendant won't run on an R-30iA cabinet, and pendants shipped with DCS-capable systems carry different firmware from standard units. Swapping between systems without checking the compatibility matrix strands the pendant at a TPIF fault.

Cable choice matters too. The pendant cable is a proprietary hybrid of power, safety, and communication conductors; a generic replacement will either fail to seat or drop signals under motion. Buy the specified cable length and route it through the cabinet strain relief exactly as documented.

Field troubleshooting starts with the cable. Unplug at both ends, inspect the pins for green oxide or bent tips, then bench-test the pendant on a known-good cabinet if one is available. If the pendant faults on a second cabinet too, the unit itself is done.

Everyday examples: a pendant that reboots when the operator pulls it back toward the fence usually has a cracked solder joint at the cable connector on the pendant body. A screen that reads pressure from an operator's palm as a taskbar tap is a delaminated digitizer. The e-stop button and enable switch on the pendant also route through the emergency stop board inside the cabinet, so a fault chased to the pendant sometimes actually lives there.