Robotic Polishing of the Meat Grinder Blade under Path Planning and Controlled Force

Abstract

In recent years, industrial robots have been widely used in many applications such as assembling, stacking, welding, spraying and others. Whereas, the surface grinding and polishing are the applications which are still required a lot of improvement especially for the curved and free form surfaces. Most commonly used articulated robots are suitable candidates for such surfaces because its end effector can provide orientations required for polishing of the free from surfaces. Besides the reachability, tool path planning and the contact force between polishing tool and surface are other two important factors which required proper consideration. This paper presents the robotic polishing of the meat grinder blade under suitable path planning and controlled force. Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAM) software Mastercam is used to achieve the trajectory path of the robot during the polishing process. Experiments are conducted to prove the adopted methodology.