Automation of Polishing Work by an Industrial Robot. 1st Report. System of Polishing Robot.

Abstract

This study deals with the automation of polishing work by use of an industrial robot with 6degrees of freedom. Since polishing work, which takes much time, requires experience, patience and skill, it is manually performed by skilled workers. The study aims at rationalizing such difficult polishing work by introducing the robot and CAD technology. The arm of a robot can be equipped with two kinds of polishing tool, i.e, a rotational tool and an ultrasonic vibrational one, to cope with various configurations of workpiece surfaces. In addition, the system allows collision-free polishing paths derived from the CAD system to be adapted to those of the actual robot coordinate system by use of a touch sensor. The system is found to be effective in obtaining smooth workpiece surfaces from several experimental results.