Robot accuracy degrades through gearbox wear and cumulative small collisions, and the robot has no idea. It reports the position it commanded, not the position it reached. On a weld cell that means the gun lands progressively off-joint; on material handling it means parts presented slightly wrong to the next station. Mastering offsets measured against the previous calibration are what turn that drift into a number.
The steps ChatterFix schedules for this PM. Every step is a checkable item on the work order — a technician can speak their way through it without touching a keyboard.
Robot accuracy degrades through gearbox wear and cumulative small collisions, and the robot has no idea. It reports the position it commanded, not the position it reached. On a weld cell that means the gun lands progressively off-joint; on material handling it means parts presented slightly wrong to the next station. Mastering offsets measured against the previous calibration are what turn that drift into a number.
Welds creep off the flange, a fixture starts seeing occasional misloads, and the cell accumulates 'quirks' that operators work around with manual intervention. The rework is real but diffuse enough that nobody traces it to the robot. The harder failure is a worn cable dress shorting inside the energy chain, which is an unplanned stop on a cell with no bypass.
Semi-annual, run-hours leading on cells at high duty. Any collision, however minor, should trigger a mastering check immediately — collisions are the dominant cause of sudden offset, and running production on an uncalibrated robot after one is how a small event becomes a day of rework.
This procedure — and every other PM for your industry — is already built into ChatterFix. Pick your industry and it lands on the right equipment, on the right interval, in about three minutes.