What the E0117 alarm means

The controller lost connection to the teach pendant. This fault ranks high in our Nachi AW / FD series service records, and the first site inspection usually finds the source.

Most common causes

  • Pendant cable damaged or loose
  • Pendant connector fault
  • Pendant hardware failure
  • Controller pendant port fault
Field note: The first cause shows up most on real machines, so verify it before you go further.

Step-by-step field fix

  1. Reseat the pendant connector
  2. Inspect the pendant cable
  3. Swap-test with another pendant
  4. Power-cycle the controller
  5. Replace pendant or repair the port as indicated
Safety first: For NACHI e0117, when communication drops, controller and external devices can disagree about state; at reconnect, external axes or tooling may act on stale commands. What you can check yourself first is Reseat the pendant connector; external axes and tooling interlocks handling is not a DIY job.

How we diagnose communication alarms on site

NACHI e0117 belongs to the communication family. On NACHI e0117 the failing stage is AX-series / FD-series controllers - the data link: fieldbus, Ethernet, cabinet-to-body communication and external device interfaces. We start reading NACHI e0117 at the pendant error-code screen (E-series codes) with amplifier panel indicators.

The chain involved in NACHI e0117 runs: physical layer (cable / connector / shield) -> link layer (protocol / baud / node ID) -> application layer (data mapping / handshakes).

If NACHI e0117 appears only when talking to external devices: When the alarm appears only in traffic with a PLC, vision system or host, the fault usually sits in application-layer mapping and handshake timing: wrong signal addresses, wrong handshake order, timeouts set too tight. We capture signal states on both the robot side and the device side and see which one fails to act as expected. This is not a hardware fault; it needs both sides adjusted together, usually alongside the customer's electrical engineer.

Field notes on this page cover NACHI e0117 (Teach Pendant Connection Abnormal); written by the Henghuan repair team, updated 2026-10-01.

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Related Communication alarms

E0012 — Robot Cannot Reach Recorded Point E0021 — Servo Follow-Up Error (Following Error) E0022 — Deviation Error E0025 — Position Jump (Jump Position) E0028 — Motor Power Voltage Drop E0029 — Encoder Incremental Data Abnormal
Same family: this code belongs to the Communication alarms family - the page collects all Communication-family codes we have handled, with the common inspection order and spares.
Other brands: we also keep field-fix libraries for Omron · ESTUN · INOVANCE and more — see the complete alarm code hub.

Frequently asked questions

QWhat does the NACHI e0117 alarm mean?

The controller lost connection to the teach pendant. This fault ranks high in our Nachi AW / FD series service records, and the first site inspection usually finds the source. NACHI e0117 sits in the communication family; on our work orders the highest-frequency trigger for this code is "Pendant cable damaged or loose".

QCan I clear a NACHI e0117 alarm myself?

Whether NACHI e0117 clears on its own depends on the outcome of "Reseat the pendant connector". Finish the flow with "Replace pendant or repair the port as indicated" to confirm NACHI e0117 - do not skip it. If that step is clean, the second most frequent cause on NACHI e0117 is "Pendant connector fault". After clearing NACHI e0117, watch it for one shift. A second trip means stop and let an engineer arrive with the right test gear for external axes and tooling interlocks.

QFor communication alarms like NACHI e0117, how long does a site visit take?

The commonest causes we see on NACHI e0117 are "Pendant cable damaged or loose, Pendant connector fault, Pendant hardware failure", so we stock the van against those. For NACHI e0117 specifically, we carry common bus cables, connectors, termination resistors and shield terminals. For NACHI e0117, communication work is about tracing the physical link segment by segment; most cases close in one visit. Before we roll, tell us what NACHI e0117 shows on the pendant error-code screen (E-series codes) with amplifier panel indicators and what the machine was doing - phone or video triage is free.

This page on NACHI e0117 was written by the Henghuan Robotics repair team from field service experience. Alarm descriptions are our own summary for troubleshooting reference and may vary by controller and software version — when in doubt, check your Nachi documentation or contact us. Henghuan is an independent service provider, not affiliated with or endorsed by Nachi.