Contact force control and vibration suppression in robotic polishing with a smart end effector

•A novel end effector is specially designed for robotic polishing of blisks.•A new eddy current damper is designed and fabricated for vibration suppression.•The principles of the force control method and eddy current dampers are explained.•Significant improvements are achieved in vibration reduction and surface quality. Polishing of thin-walled blisks can easily lead to vibrations and affect the surface quality. To solve this problem, we present a novel smart end effector for active contact force control and vibration suppression in robotic polishing of thin-walled blisks. A gravity-compensated force controller is developed to maintain the contact force between the polishing tool and the workpiece to an expected value. Two novel eddy current dampers are designed and integrated into the smart end effector to improve the system dynamics and suppress the vibrations. The principles of the contact force control and vibration suppression with the smart end effector are explained. Experimental results show that the presented smart end effector reduces the contact force variation in the robotic blisk polishing from 8 N to less than 1 N, and significantly suppresses the spindle vibrations, therefore, leading to a better surface quality.