Dexterous polishing of overhanging sculptured surfaces with a 6-axis control robot

The paper deals with the generation of 6-axis control collision-free polishing command data for an industrial robot with 6 degrees of freedom. Workpieces with, for example, a side wall or an overhanging sculptured surface, are difficult to polish using straight-type rotational tools since the collision between the polishing tool and the workpiece cannot be avoided. Thus, an L-shaped rotational tool consisting of a tool axis and an arm axis has been devised, where the angle of the tool axis to the arm axis can be set arbitrarily. In generating the polishing path for the L-shaped rotational tool, the 6-axis control collision avoidance method is introduced, based on our CAD/CAM system. The collision-free polishing path generated is converted into robot control command data for actual polishing work. It is experimentally shown that the system is valid for polishing workpieces with complicated shape