Angular analysis of the cyclic impacting oscillations in a robotic grinding process

In a robotic machining process, a light-weight cutter or grinder is usually held by an articulated robot arm. Material removal is achieved by the rotating cutting tool while the robot end effector ensures that the tool follows a programmed trajectory in order to work on complex curved surfaces or to access hard-to-reach areas. One typical application of such process is maintenance and repair work on hydropower equipment. This paper presents an experimental study of the dynamic characteristics of material removal in robotic grinding, which is unlike conventional grinding due to the lower structural stiffness of the tool-holder robot. The objective of the study is to explore the cyclic nature of this mechanical operation to provide the basis for future development of better process control strategies. Grinding tasks that minimize the number of iterations to converge to the target surface can be better planned based on a good understanding and modeling of the cyclic material removal mechanism. A single degree of freedom dynamic analysis of the process suggests that material removal is performed through high-frequency impacts that mainly last for only a small fraction of the grinding disk rotation period. To detect these discrete cutting events in practice; a grinder is equipped with a rotary encoder. The encoder's signal is acquired through the angular sampling technique. A running cyclic synchronous average is applied to the speed signal to remove its non-cyclic events. The measured instantaneous rotational frequency clearly indicates the impacting nature of the process and captures the transient response excited by these cyclic impacts. The technique also locates the angular positions of cutting impacts in revolution cycles. It is thus possible to draw conclusions about the cyclic nature of dynamic changes in impact-cutting behavior when grinding with a flexible robot. The dynamics of the impacting regime and transient responses to impact-cutting excitations captured synchronously using the angular sampling technique provide feedback that can be used to regulate the material removal process. The experimental results also make it possible to correlate the energy required to remove a chip of metal through impacting with the measured drop in angular speed during grinding. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.