Product Alert: e-Series robot joints microcontroller update

Date: February 23, 2022

Product(s) Affected:  all e-Series robots

Summary: This is notification of an upcoming product revision. Universal Robots is introducing an alternative Microcontroller-B chip to the e-Series robots’ joint sizes 2, 3, and 4. This hardware change is adopted to cater the supply shortage of critical components (original Microcontroller-B chip) which is the electronics industry-wide situation globally.

E-Series robots manufactured with the alternative Microcontroller-B chip must be run with Polyscope version 5.11.9 or newer.

Overview

• E-Series robots manufactured with the alternative Microcontroller-B chip will only work with Polyscope 5.11.9 or newer.
• If a user installs a version of Polyscope older than 5.11.9 on the robot manufactured with an alternative Microcontroller-B chip, they will get an error at startup and the robot will not run. The error can be resolved by installing Polyscope 5.11.9 or newer.
• Universal Robots recommends that all users keep their robots up-to-date with the latest version of Polyscope. Universal Robots implements bug fixes and other improvements with every Polyscope release and does extensive testing to ensure that programs written in previous versions of Polyscope will run on the latest version. If a user experiences any issues after updating software or hardware on a UR robot, they should contact their distributor or open a case in MyUR.
• For customers who wish to run Polyscope versions older than 5.11.9, Universal Robots will try to maintain and acquire a supply of service parts based on original Microcontroller-B chips. Unfortunately due to the challenge of critical components the expected lead times in this case can exceed up to a year or so. Consult your regional service center for further details.

E-Series robots manufactured with the new Microcontroller-B

From 14th February 2022 onwards, Universal Robots started to transition the production of e-Series robots with the new Microcontroller-B. However, the transition will gradually take place and during this phase e-Series robots will be produced with a mix of old or new Microcontroller-B in the robot joints depending on the production stocks. Due to the challenge of critical components, Universal Robots cannot issue a cut on the robot serial numbers that will get the change.

If you have any questions, please contact your local Universal Robots distributor or open a ticket on MyUR.