Development of an automatic mold polishing system

In this study, an automatic mold polishing system (AMPS), was developed. Software engineering technique was used to analyze the manual operation of polishing procedure to obtain the task specifications for the automatic system. Four main modules were designed in the system: geometric data processing, polishing process planning, polishing path planning, and the user interface modules. The geometric data of molds can be input via three methods. The mold geometry and the polishing path can be drawn in 3D for verification. The AMPS can also generate process task list according to the mold polishing requirements. The task list includes all the procedures and optimal polishing parameters. The polishing tasks were then executed by a force controllable robot. The experiment shows that the resultant of surface roughness is closed to the prediction in the process planning.