Study on Simplification of Teaching Method for Polishing Robot

Most polishing processes still rely on skilled laborers, who polish the finished surface by hands. Contour gages are manually placed on the curved surface and used to guide workers to the final shape. The purpose of this study is to simplify a teaching method for a five axis controlled polishing robot. A device which detects the normal vectors to complicated surfaces of a workpiece is to built by differential transformers and applied to an axial asymmetric workpiece such as turbine blade. The detected normal vectors are converted into polishing data, which include geometrical data and tool path. The polished workpiece is estimated by surface roughness and shape accuracy. It is confirmed that the developed method is available to simplify the teaching method of the robot.