• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.20 no.7
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• pp.147-154
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• 2003

An effective die-polishing robot system is developed. ATC (Automatic Tool Change), tool posture angle control, and robot program for polishing application are developed and integrated into a robotic system that consists of a robot, pneumatic grinding tool, and grinding abrasives (papers and special films). ATC is specifically designed to exchange whole grinding tool set for complete unmanned operation. A tool posture angle control system is developed for the tools to maintain a specified skew angle rather than right angle on the surface for best finishing results. A PC and the robot controller control ATC and tool posture angle. Also, there have been more considerations on enhancing the performance of the system. Elastic material is inserted between the grinding pad and the holder for better grinding contact. Robot path data are generated automatically from the NC data of previous machining process.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.334-343
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• 2001

Polishing a die that has free-form surfaces is a time-consuming and tedious job, and requires a considerable amount of high-precision skill. Some workers tend to gradually avoid the polishing work because of the poor environment caused by dust and noise. In order to reduce the polishing time and cope with the shortage of skilled workers, a user-friendly automatic polishing system was developed in this research. The polishing system with five degrees of freedom is able to keep the polishing tool normal to the die surface. The polishing system is controlled by a PC-NC controller. To easily operate the developed polishing robot system, this study developed an integrated program in the Windows environment. This program consists of four modules: the polishing module, the graphic simulator, the polishing data generation module, and the teaching module. Also, the automatic teaching system was developed to easily obtain teaching data and it consists of a three dimensional joystick and a proximity sensor. The joystick is used to simultaneously drive the polishing system to an arbitrary orientation and the proximity sensor is used to obtain teaching points precisely. Also, to evaluate the stability of the driving program and the teaching system, polishing experiments of a die of saddle shape were carried out.