Build any operator screen for a FANUC CRX robot — right on the tablet.
HMI Forge is a touch-first authoring tool for custom operator HMIs that run directly on the FANUC Tablet Teach Pendant (TP). No PC, no VS Code, no ROBOGUIDE required. Drag controls, bind them to live robot I/O, and deploy on the tablet itself.
Creating an HMI with HMI Forge on the FANUC Tablet TP
The case for a custom HMI
Your operators shouldn't have to know their way around all the FANUC menus.
That's asking for trouble: an operator changes a value they shouldn't, or you get a call at 2am because nobody can find the reset button.
The answer is a custom HMI with everything an operator needs and nothing they don't.
You could build one with FANUC's Plugin SDK. That means learning KAREL, HTML, CSS and JavaScript, then days or weeks of work, or paying someone thousands to do it.
With HMI Forge, you install one plugin and build screens on the tablet, with no code. Each one takes minutes instead of hours.
A three-minute narrated video of a nine-minute build: two operator screens, and a prompt the robot program uses to ask the operator a question.
How it works
Design, bind and deploy without leaving the robot.
Design on the tablet
Drag, drop and resize with your finger. Prefer a mouse? Open the editor from a laptop through iRProgrammer.
Bind to live robot I/O with tags
Tags are the glue between HMI elements and the robot.
part_presentRI[1]
Deploy on the controller
Press Save and the screen runs on the tablet. Move screens, themes and images to another cell or to ROBOGUIDE on a USB stick.
What you see in the editor is what the operator gets.
There's no compile or export step, so the screen can't look different on the floor. The preview runs the same screen, and you can set tag values by hand to test it with no robot attached.
Controls
A real authoring tool, not a template picker.
Seventeen controls, all drag-and-drop, all bound to live robot I/O by name, all following your theme. What they add up to:
Run the cell
The Start / Hold / Reset / Abort row as one pre-wired control, buttons that write tags or launch TP programs, and dropdowns fed by the controller's program list.
Watch the state
Indicator lamps, gauges with color bands, rolling trends, live position, the real FANUC 3D view, and the iRVision camera image with its results.
Tune the process
Keypad entry clamped to a min and max you set, and sliders with a live readout. Operators adjust only what you let them.
Catch the faults
Define alarms once. A banner always shows the most severe active one, with the history behind it.
A finished operator screen, running on the Tablet TP
The full set
- Button
- Program control
- Indicator
- Gauge
- Alarm banner
- Dropdown
- Number input
- Slider
- Label
- Image
- Position
- Trend
- 3D View
- iRVision View
- Rectangle
- Ellipse
- Line
Multi-screen authoring
Multiple screens and documents, undo/redo, copy/paste, multi-select with alignment, layers, and register-driven screen switching so a TP program can drive navigation.
Theming
A token-based theme system with bundled presets and industrial pushbutton styles. Restyle a whole HMI without touching each control.
Built for offline
USB import/export for documents, themes and tags, plus on-device diagnostic logs. Everything works with no internet.
Need a control that isn't here? Email me.
See every control in detail →Give your FANUC cells a better operator interface.
Get a walkthrough on your own hardware. You'll talk to the engineer who built it, not a sales funnel.
Then try it free for two weeks on your own robot.
Questions
What people ask on the first call.
If yours isn't here, the docs go deeper than this page does.
How does the robot controller replace the PLC?
In many cells, it already can. The CRX's R-30iB Mini Plus controller has built-in digital I/O for peripheral devices, runs several programs at once with multitasking, and supports background logic that runs continuously alongside them, the way a PLC scans.
What it doesn't have is a custom operator screen. HMI Forge adds that on the Tablet TP. Whether your cell still needs a PLC depends on what else it has to talk to, and the demo call is a good place to work that out.
What software options do I need to order from FANUC?
None. HMI Forge is a plugin developed with FANUC's Plugin SDK. It installs from a single file via FANUC's Plugins menu.
What the robot does need is a Tablet TP. Every CRX ships with one; on a traditional FANUC robot it's
the Tablet TP option, S527. The minimum FANUC software version is
v9.40P/65. You can check your robot via
Menu > Expand All > Status > Version ID.
How does licensing work?
Like a FANUC PAC code. Each license gets a unique license key tied to the robot controller. It's perpetual: one purchase, no subscription and no renewal.
What happens if the controller fails or gets replaced?
Just email me, and I'll send you a new license at no charge.
What stops an operator from editing the screens I built?
Two locks, and the built-in one needs nothing from FANUC: give the editor a password, and operators see only the running screens. The editor behind them isn't reachable.
If the controller has FANUC's Password Protection option, J541, the lock becomes the
controller's own. HMI Forge writes the passlvl.xml file for you. Once it's imported,
operators can use every screen but can't open the editor at all. Higher user levels keep their
access.
Setting up Password Protection is documented step by step.
Can the robot program ask the operator something and wait for the answer?
Yes. A prompt is a small screen that opens over whatever the operator is looking at. One
CALL in the TP program raises it and waits, and the answer comes back as a number in a
register, so the program can branch on it.
CALL IPL_ONEROBOTICS_HMI_PROMPT('Cell 1','RobotClear',21)
If you know FANUC's Menu Utility option, R577, prompts cover the same ground. They start
from templates like yes/no and pick-from-a-list, but a prompt is a screen, so you can add any control
to it.
A timeline editor icon writes the call for you. Prompts are documented in full.
One screen won't cover my cell. How far does a document go?
A document is the set of screens for one cell. It holds as many as you need, with tabs and a start screen, in portrait or landscape. Controls copy and paste between screens, so the first layout that works becomes the template for the rest.
My cell is air-gapped. Does any of this need internet?
None of it. Everything runs on the controller.
I run yellow robots too, not just CRX. Same tool?
Yes, as long as the robot has the Tablet TP option, S527. HMI Forge targets the Tablet TP
rather than a robot family, so everything on this page applies unchanged: same editor, same controls,
same tag binding, same USB workflow.
That means one HMI tool across the whole fleet, not one for the CRX and a PC-based HMI for the rest.
Screens move between robots on a USB stick. On a retrofit, adding
S527 is a much smaller line item than adding a panel HMI, an industrial PC and the
licenses to run it.
Who builds it
FANUC robots since 2008.
I started my career at FANUC in 2008 and have consulted on robotics full time since 2012. ONE Robotics Company is one person: me, Jay Strybis.
The ONE Robotics website has been a reference for engineers learning to program FANUC robots since 2013, and it hosts several free, open-source tools for FANUC development. My book, Robot Whispering: The unofficial guide to programming FANUC robots, came out in 2018 and has been read by engineers at more than 600 companies and 50 universities.
I've also been building websites since 2000. The CRX plugin system needs both halves at once, web development and robot programming, which is why I started building CRX plugins for other companies in 2023. HMI Forge is the first of several plugins I have planned.
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Robot programming notes, not product announcements.