How to use motion types, offsets, and speed registers on a FANUC teach pendant

💡 How-to
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Based on contributions by SanderOtto.

A set of practical FANUC teach-pendant techniques: choosing between smooth and precise motion, resetting position registers safely, working from offsets, saving jogged positions, and reusing speed settings.

What you need

  • A FANUC robot with teach pendant access to the program editor and registers

Steps

1. Choose CNT or FINE motion

  • CNT (Continuous): the robot moves smoothly through a point without stopping — useful when speed and smooth motion matter more than stopping precisely. In the motion settings, select CNT and give it a percentage (1–100) to control how much the path is rounded near the point.
  • FINE (Precise stop): the robot stops exactly at the specified point — use it where a task needs an accurate stop at a specific location. Set the motion type to FINE in the program editor.

2. Zero a position register before reusing it

To avoid unexpected offsets carrying over from a previous movement, reset a position register by subtracting it from itself, e.g. PR[1] = PR[1] - PR[1]. This acts as a safety precaution against leftover offset values.

:warning: Check: this resets all components of the register to zero: verify that’s actually what you want before a movement that relies on unrelated fields of the same register.

3. Work with offsets from an absolute position

Offsets let you make small adjustments relative to a fixed reference position, which speeds up programming and reduces position errors.

  1. Define an absolute position as your reference point.
  2. Apply an offset by adding or subtracting values from that position.
  3. Test the program with the offset applied to confirm the robot moves accurately relative to the reference point.

4. Save a jogged position

To capture the robot’s current position after manually jogging it:

  1. Jog the robot to the desired position.
  2. Press SHIFT + RECORD to save the current position into a position register.
  3. Use that register in your program as a reference or starting point.

5. Set standard speeds in registers

To reuse the same speed across multiple movements instead of retyping it:

  1. Go to the register section on the controller.
  2. Enter the standard speed values you want to reuse.
  3. Assign a different register to each movement that needs its own speed, for fine-tuned control.

Related

Rewritten and consolidated (Sept 2026) from the original student how-to’s: How to guide for FANUC robot programming tips.

How to structure FANUC teach pendant code for readability
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