The Development of Grinding Robot System Using NC data and Off-line Programming

Abstract

This paper presents a method of grinding and polishing automation of precision die after CNC machining. The method employs a robot system equipped with a pneumatic spindle and a special abrasive film pad. The robot program is automatically generated off-line program form a PC and downloaded to robot controller. Position and orientation data for the program is supplied form cutter contact (CC) data of NC machining process. This eliminates separate robot teaching process. This paper aims at practical automation of die finishing process which is very time consuming and suffering from shortage of workpeople. Time loss due to changeover from one product to another is eliminated by PC off-line programming exploiting appropriate NC machining data. Dextrous 6-axis robot with rigid wrist and simple tooling enables the process applicable to larger, rather complex 3 dimensional free surfaces.