Autonomous tool adjustment in robotic grinding

The work presented here is concerned with acquiring knowledge that allows a robot to adjust a rubber abrasive disk in the grinding process. The experiments performed in this work were conducted using a six-axis articulated robot. A rotary hand grinding system with a cup-shaped rubber abrasive disk is held by a robot actuator to perform the grinding task. The workpiece is an aluminum alloy block fixed onto a piezoelectric type dynamometer. The authors propose a method where by the robot can frequently reduce errors by using external cutting force data in order to adjust the tool to the workpiece surface. This adjustment is effective in finding the optimal tool angle to obtain the best ground surface. The effects of grinding strokes on the surface roughness and depth of machining have been found also. With the aid of the experiments performed in this work, it is possible to find good machining conditions in an autonomous robotic grinding system. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.