Chatter Suppression in Robotic Milling by Control of Configuration Dependent Dynamics

Serial industrial robots tend to have low static stiffness and possess configuration dependent dynamics. The former results in an earlier onset of chatter compared to machine tools whereas the latter introduces robot configuration dependency into the process stability. In this paper, the robot configuration is continuously varied around its functional redundancy to create time varying system dynamics to suppress and/or avoid chatter in a robotic milling operation. It was shown that, at low spindle speeds it is possible to suppress chatter even though the quasi-static stability predictions may indicate instability at different robot configurations for the chosen process parameters. (C) 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.