Sometimes it is necessary to swap a robot in the field for a different arm. When doing this, it should always be for an arm that has been calibrated by Universal Robots. All new arms and any arm sent back to UR for repair will be calibrated by UR. When you perform this swap it is usually the case that you will want to continue to run the same parts on the new robot that were running on the previous robot. There is a very simple way to accomplish this. The basic steps are to deactivate the original robot in the Beacon app and then re-activate it with the new serial number robot. Let's walk through the steps to perform this simple task.

If possible, move the robot to the put-in-box position by running the put-in-box position program on the Universal Robots teach pendant. Once the arm is put into the box position you will want to deactivate the robot in the Beacon app. To do this, navigate to the robot in the app and then go to the Configure tab on the top of the robot

You will then click on Robot Info

Now Click on Deactivate Robot

Then click I'm sure

Now that the robot has been deactivated in the system you can power down the old robot and complete the removal process.

NOTE: If you are only swapping the arm but leaving the controller installed you will want to make sure to remove the SD card from the controller and keep that with the robot arm as the calibration files are contained on that SD card for the arm.

Install the new robot as normal. When you power it up you may need to install the Beacon URCap if it is not located under the installation tab, you can find instructions for doing that here.

Once the robot is powered up and online, on the robot navigate to the Installation tab, under the URCaps left menu you should find Beacon. Click on that menu item and you will see an activation code.

In the Beacon app, navigate to the team where the robot should be reactivated.

Click on the Blue dot in the bottom right of the screen to add a new robot to the team.

You should see the robot listed there, if there a number of robots you can enter the name of the robot you want to reactivate in the search bar as shown above.

Click on the robot you want to reactivate, in this case, Nashville Lab Robot, and you will be taken to the reactivation screen where you can enter the activation code.

Enter the registration code that is found on the UR Teach pendant on the Beacon URCap screen from the installation tab

Once you have entered the code, simply hit the Reactivate robot button and the robot will be reactivated and all prior parts, history, etc will be restored. You will now find the robot back in the team as it was before

You may now run the robot just as it was before. With a calibrated arm you should have no issues with running the part flows without the need to change any of the taught points.