Skillful Feed Rate Control for Machine Tools Using a Fuzzy Reasoning

Abstract

Cycle time reduction is one of the most important elements in manufacturing industries where NC machine tools and industrial robots are used. For example, the feed-rate of a polishing robot is moderately given small values in order to keep a stable contact situation, when a workpiece has a large curvature. In this paper, we propose an advanced feed-rate control for machine tools so that the feed-rate along curved surface can be regulated suitably. It is known that the smaller the curvatures of the workpiece modeled by a 3D CAD are, the larger the distance between two adjacent steps of cutter location (CL) data generated by the main-processor of the CAM is. Accordingly, considering the curvature results in acquiring the distance between two adjacent steps of the CL data. The proposed method can desirably change the feed-rate by using a simple fuzzy reasoning. Promising results are shown through experiments using a mold polishing robot and an NC machine tool with a rotary unit.