Automation of Polishing Work by an Industrial Robot : 6th Report, Automatic Selection of Straight-type/L-shaped Polishing Tools

Abstract

The study deals with automatic polishing performed by a six-degree-of-freedom industrial robot equipped with two types of automatically selected rotational polishing tools. Little progress has been made in the autolmation of polishing since it requires much skill and experience. An industrial robot and a CAD system are introduced to cope with this problem. However, most products are so complicated that one type of polishing tool is not enough to provide a good finish. The aim of this study is to device a program that will enable the robot to automatically select polishing tools suitable for each workpiece surface and to polish it according to the type of tool. The system automatically selects the I-shaped (straight) rotational tool or the L-shaped one according to the surface shape of a workpiece using strategies to discriminate on the basis of CAD data. After the selection, the system generates a polishing path for both tools and performs the polishing. From experimental results, the system is found to be effective in polishing workpiece surfaces of complicated shapes.