Teach pendant matching: what to check beyond the A05B number
A teach pendant looks like the simplest part on a robot — a screen with keys in a tough box — and generates a disproportionate share of wrong orders. The A05B number is necessary and not sufficient. This guide covers what else decides a match: the controller behind the pendant, the cable and connector, and the condition points that matter on a used unit.
From the Spareaxis blog — guides for buyers of FANUC spare parts.
The number is the start, not the match
The catalogue's named pendant, the A05B-2256-C100, illustrates the starting point: quote the full A05B number from the pendant's label, suffix included, exactly as the part-number guide prescribes for every family. A05B numbers subdivide finely, and a pendant ordered on a partial number or a similar number is a parcel on its way back.
But a pendant is a peripheral, and peripherals marry systems. The same robot family spans controller generations, and a pendant belongs to its controller as much as to its robot: two pendants with close numbers can serve different controller generations and refuse each other's machines. The number says what the pendant is; the controller check says whether it is yours.
The controller generation check
Name the robot controller — its model and generation — in every pendant inquiry. The desk matches pendant to controller as a pair, and an inquiry that names only the pendant forces the question back. Where the controller's identity is itself uncertain, the robot's documentation and the controller cabinet's own labelling carry it; a photograph of the controller's rating plate, transcribed into the message, is decisive evidence that costs a minute.
This check also protects against the reverse error: a pendant bought for a robot that is about to change controllers, in a cell being rebuilt, may be right for the outgoing controller and wrong for its replacement. Buyers mid-rebuild should say so; the desk would rather sequence the pendant purchase after the controller decision than ship into the middle of it.
Cable and connector: the wear half of the pendant
A pendant's cable lives the hardest life of any part in this catalogue: flexed daily, coiled, stepped on, caught in cell doors. Intermittent pendant faults that arrive and leave with cable movement are cable faults until the bench proves otherwise, and they are repairable without replacing the pendant. When ordering a replacement pendant, describe the machine-side cable and connector as fitted; a pendant that arrives to meet a damaged fixed cable completes only half the repair.
Connector form belongs in the same description. Pendants connect by a specific connector pattern, and a mismatch is absolute — the plug either mates or the order was wrong. A photograph of the connector, or its careful description, is cheap insurance that the desk will always accept in place of a guess.
Screens, keys and the used pendant
Most replacement pendants are used or surplus units, for the usual market reasons, and their condition divides into electronics and interface. Electronics are testable conclusively: the pendant wakes, the screen lights evenly, every key row registers, the enabling switch behaves. Interface wear is a matter of degree: scratched screens, faded legends, a housing cracked at a corner. Both matter; they matter differently, and a condition statement for a pendant should address each in its own words, as the condition framework prescribes.
The enabling switch deserves its own sentence in any condition conversation, because it is part of the safety chain: a pendant whose switch is mechanically tired is not a bargain at any price. Ask the question directly, and treat a seller's inability to answer it as the answer. For the desk's part, a pendant is tested awake — screen lit, keys exercised, switch checked — before it is described as tested, on the same bench discipline as every other unit in the building.
Repair before replacement, often
Pendants are the catalogue's most repairable family relative to their price: cable renewal, screen replacement and key-row work cover most of the failures that retire them, and the repair desk treats a dropped pendant as a routine intake. A buyer with a pendant that lights but will not key, or keys but will not light, holds a repair candidate, not necessarily a replacement order, and the same inquiry can hold both questions at once.
The complete pendant inquiry, then: full A05B number, robot controller model and generation, cable and connector description, the fitted pendant's symptoms, and the condition that will be accepted. Five items, one message — and the first answer can be a match, a repair quotation, or both side by side, which is the whole point of asking a desk that stocks one and benches the other.
The pendant cable is part of the match
A teach pendant rarely works alone: between the pendant and the controller sits its cable, and the cable is a matching item in its own right. Connector forms changed across controller generations, and a pendant that is right for the controller can still fail to connect through a cable from another series — or connect and misbehave through damaged conductors in a cable that looks sound. When a pendant is quoted, the cable should be named in the same line: supplied with the pendant, reused from the old pendant, or ordered separately.
Symptoms help separate the two halves. A pendant dead on every controller points at the pendant; a pendant that works on a test controller but not on its own points at the cable or the controller's pendant port; a pendant that drops out when the cable moves has confessed already. Sending the symptom with the A05B number turns the inquiry from a pendant question into a diagnosis, and the desk can answer with the half that is actually at fault — which is sometimes the cheaper half.
Used pendants add one more grading question: the difference between wear and damage. A keypad with polished legends and a screen with honest scratches are wear, priced into a used unit and harmless to its work. A cracked housing corner, a dead-man switch that feels uneven, or an emergency stop that does not latch cleanly are damage, and they belong in the listing's words, not its surprises. Ask which of the two the photographs show, and let the answer — or its absence — set the price you are willing to pay.
None of this requires the buyer to become a pendant specialist. It requires only that the inquiry carry the number, the controller and the symptom together, because each of the three rules out a different wrong shipment.
Related pages
Send an inquiry
Send the part numbers you need, or the number of a unit you want assessed, with the machine each belongs to. One desk answers for the shelves and the bench.
Open the inquiry form