Adding a pole target causes bones to ignore their IK constraints I currently have a robotic arm rig with the shoulder only being able to rotate along 1 axis, and the bicep only being allowed to rotate along a different axis. I am controlling these bones with an IK controller, and It's working great, save for the fact that when I add a pole target to adjust the solution, all of my axis locks are ignored. 

This issue has been driving me crazy, and I am wondering if there is a solution. 

Here is the blend file : as you can see, the rig works exactly as intended, but when you set the pole target as the bone labeled "elbow" the axis locks are ignored.
As it turns out, this is impossible. The issue of ik constraints being ignored because of a pole target is a known problem. Hopefully support for this function will be added in the future. I might have to look into fixing it myself.