I might be getting ahead of myself, but bear with me for a while.
Imagine you build a 3, 4, 5 or 6 axis robot (abb and fanuc like) i know the difficulty here lies in telling the robot what to do (generate the toolpath). Ok now imagine making another robot, with the same dimensions (or scaled down) and instead of fitting the robot with servos, you just put the encoders. Now here is what I am getting at:
Is it possible to move the motorless version of the robot and have the motored robot make the same moves? Better yet, can those moves on the motorless robot be recorded, and then played back by the motored robot?

Come fly with me!
Regards
Fernando

We are thinking about adding the inverse kinematics to do that but you are looking at about a year out at least

That sounds great, can hold up for a while. That would help with generating a toolpath with a cam program.
But could the encoder robot idea be done? Im thinking its easier to move the robot with its encoder counterpart to make pick and place or welding programming easier. Im thinking its difficult to generate a tooplath for a welding operation.
Anyways... its all good...
Fernando

That could be done in a plug in (I think)

ohh really?
better start learning VB!! and plug-ins.
Im thinking maybe there is no need to make two robots, just unplug the motors on the ONE robot, and use the encoders to record the movements.
Regards
Fernando

It is all C++ and it takes a bit to learn