David Facio
Lead Robotics & Automation Engineer
FANUC-focused robot integrator with deep experience in PLC-controlled machine tending, machine vision, safety systems, EOAT, simulation, field commissioning, and customer handoff.
Selected Work
Two of these are machines I helped build and demonstrated publicly at IMTS 2024, shown here in photographs. The rest sit behind customer NDAs, so they are written instead: customer names and proprietary details are withheld, the engineering decisions and integration scope are not.
Vision-guided machine tending
One cell, three robots tending three CNC lathes, at ~12× the output of the process it replaced and 95% uptime. The customer has ordered it seven times. Includes the field revision that came after oil mist killed the first inspection design.
Read case study
Vision-guided machine loading
A FANUC LR Mate built onto the machine rather than beside it: Keyence vision locates blanks on a loose conveyor, a dual gripper swaps finished part for blank in one entry, and a custom pendant screen runs production without robot programming. Exhibited at IMTS 2024.
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Force-controlled finishing
A six-axis robot carries the part to fixed abrasive stations while a force/torque sensor regulates edge contact — so position error and wheel wear stop mattering, and operators add new parts as recipes instead of robot programs. Exhibited at IMTS 2024.
Read case studyDual-purpose robotic cell
Deburring was the requirement; assembly was added so the robot had work between batches and the customer's engineers could get the capital approved. ~20 s automatic changeover, four-camera vision, Modbus feeders, regrip station — and both modes run in production.
Read case studyRobot programming example
A sanitized look at real robot code: a 31-program A_MAIN cycle with two
asynchronous background tasks and timeout-bounded CNC / insertion / conveyor handshakes, plus a
breadcrumb-based safe-return homing routine — shown with call-graph, process-flow, and
routing diagrams generated from the code.
Open-source robotics tooling
A public, MIT-licensed toolchain that plans, generates, validates, and safely deploys FANUC TP programs — built through AI-assisted development directed by hands-on FANUC expertise, with a Rust SNPX/SRTP register codec, JSON-schema validation, approval gates, and CI.
Read case studyReusable integration patterns
Applied four-way robot handshakes, critical command signals, non-critical flags, DCS, safety controllers, fault recovery, auto/manual behavior, and operator-facing HMI flows.
Cross-cutting patterns applied across the cells above.
Try the handshake simulatorAbout
I'm a robotics and automation engineer working primarily on FANUC and Mitsubishi cells for CNC machine tending, finishing, and general automation — usually as the person who owns a project from concept through commissioning and customer handoff. In practice that means the robot, the vision system, the safety architecture and the control strategy are my calls, and nothing goes to a customer without my sign-off on the code and the wiring.
Most of my work sits behind an NDA, which is why much of this portfolio is written rather than photographed. The exception is the two machines above: products exhibited publicly at IMTS 2024, where I did the robot programming, vision, integration, and operator screens, then stood on the show floor demonstrating them for a week.
What holds my attention is what decides whether a cell is still running a year later: recovery behavior, operator screens with few enough choices to stay safe, and changeover a customer's own people can do themselves.
Capability Map
FANUC R-30iB Mate Plus (primary) and Mitsubishi; working exposure to KUKA, ABB, Yaskawa, UR, Epson. ROBOGUIDE, RoboDK.
Allen-Bradley, Siemens, Delta, Codesys, Studio 5000, TIA Portal, WPLSoft, ISPSoft.
Keyence CV-X, XG-X, VS 2D, RB-series 3D, FANUC iRVision, calibration, offsets, inspection.
EOAT, grippers, fixtures, guarding, conveyors, feeders, presses, servo axes, pneumatics.
Panel layout, wiring, schematics, IO checkout, drives, sensors, troubleshooting, safety circuits.
Python, C#, .NET, JavaScript, TypeScript, SQL, PowerShell, JSON Schema, OPC UA, MQTT, Git, web dashboards.
Hands-On
Vision, controls, and I/O hardware I configure and integrate on the floor.
Tools
One is the checklist I actually run against a new project before quoting it. The other is a working handshake you can drive yourself, faults and all.
Project readiness
The questions I want answered before a quote goes out: part variation, payload, vision strategy, robot-to-PLC behavior, safety, recovery cases, and what handoff will require.
Open toolInteractive demo
A live four-way handshake between a FANUC robot and a PLC: auto/manual modes, command signals, non-critical flags, fault/hold/recover/abort behavior, and a signal timing chart.
Open toolCurrent Focus
Cells are getting networked and instrumented whether integrators are ready or not. These are the three areas I'm building depth in now.
Managed switches, VLANs, segmentation, and industrial cybersecurity for robust cell networks.
Ignition, historians, OEE dashboards, and database-backed diagnostics for line-level visibility.
AOIs, UDTs, reusable FBs, PackML-style patterns, and version-controlled machine templates.
Availability
Open to Lead Robotics & Automation Engineer, Senior Robotics Engineer, Robotics Project Engineer, or Robotics Solutions Architect roles across North America; Europe with visa sponsorship.