Highly productive robot cooperation for the machining of large components

 

The machining of medium to large workpieces is currently carried out exclusively on (large) machine tools (WZM). Their acquisition involves high investment costs, long delivery times and large installation areas. In contrast to the WZM approach, there is the possibility of machining with standard industrial robots, which offer advantages in flexibility, footprint and purchase price. However, robots do not meet requirements with regard to static and dynamic stiffness, which makes it impossible to use them primarily for machining difficult-to-machine materials such as steel and stainless steel. In terms of productivity, standard industrial robots do not come close to the previous WZM process time, but one approach is simultaneous machining with several robots.

The aim of the research project "HORuS²" is a solution for the economical machining of medium-sized and large workpieces by cooperating robots. At first, the static and dynamic behaviour of the robot is investigated as a function of its position. The resulting stability maps are used to determine the limits of the processing capability. In the path planning of the robot, a continuous CAD-CAM-RC process chain is used to distribute large-volume machining features to several robots, in which an optimal and collision-free assignment between feature and robot is determined.

The aim of the first project phase is the investigation and determination of static and dynamic properties, which in contrast to the conventional WZM are variable with regard to the robot position in industrial robots. In this project, the focus is on the investigation of the influence of robot-side motion parameters when determining the machining behavior of an industrial robot. Dependencies such as position in the working area, the working plane or the direction of movement are investigated and evaluated.