Experimental Study of Inconel 718 Surface Treatment by Edge Robotic Deburring with Force Control

Abstract

We present the results of investigations into the application of robotics for deburring and chamfering to a predefined geometric quality. The robotic application was used for a part of the manufacturing process of an aircraft engine detail. Aircraft engine diffuser machining requires manual deburring of many edges. Finishing by hand results in several non-conforming quality details for each diffuser. This paper presents the concept of edge deburring with a controlled force progression pneumatic tool. A specific methodology was used to select and optimise the edge deburring process for robotic chamfering processing to a finer machining tolerance. The investigated machining process included a measurement system for the determination of the manufactured chamfer as a function of contact forces with feed force progression. The investigation work discussed in the paper helped to identify a specific interval of processing parameters, including the contact force and TCP motion velocity at which deburring is effective and a chamfer with specific geometric tolerance is produced. The experimental part of the investigation was conducted at a preset feed force of the high-speed machining file, tool ref. FDB150. The experimental machining sample was made from poorly machinable titanium alloy (Inconel 718), a material applied in the aerospace industry. The machining process optimisation included an approximation of the chamfer width definition points. The resulting function provided a derivative, defining the chamfer value change rate and corresponding to the actual machining tool infeed. The experimental measurement results were compared to the assumed quality indicators, by which a group of suboptimal parameters was defined.

Robotic machining in correlation with a 3D scanner

“…Exemplary reviews of robotic cutting may be found in Łygas and Danilczuk [1] and Song et al [2]. Algorithms controlling force and their utilisation in processes are found in Refs [3][4][5][6]. Technological parameters' super vision and communication between many robots have been described in Refs [7][8][9].…”

Position/Force Control of Manipulator in Contact with Flexible Environment

“…The number of industrial applications, in which robots come in contact with the environment and where it has a significant influence on the robotised processes realisation quality, is constantly increasing ( Mendes and Neto, 2015). The aforementioned processes include, among others, robotised mechanical processing such as grinding (Zhu et al, 2015), polishing (Gracia et al, 2018;Tian et al, 2016), or edge deburring (Burghardt et al, 2017b). Therefore, modelling and control of robots in interaction with the environment becomes crucial, particularly if the actual features of the environment are taken into account, such as flexibility or damping.…”

A Robotic Deburring Methodology for Tool Path Planning and Process Parameter Control of a Five-Degree-of-Freedom Robot Manipulator

“…Also, a review of burr formation modeling and control, and factors governing milling burr formation were presented [24]. Robotic application of edge deburring with a controlled force progression pneumatic tool for a part of the manufacturing process of an aircraft engine detail was investigated [25]. A flexible robot-based cast iron deburring cell using a single-point laser displacement sensor was developed for small batch production of a robotized deburring task in a standard cast iron foundry scenario [26].…”

“…A set of optimal process parameter combination for robotic machining and the effect of process parameters such as spindle speed, feed rate and tool path strategies on the performance characteristics were investigated using the Taguchi-Grey relational approach and analysis of variance [33]. Edge robotic deburring with a controlled force progression pneumatic tool, as well as a methodology used to select and optimize the edge robotic deburring process, was presented [25]. A sliding mode control method based on radial basis function neural network was proposed for the deburring of industry robotic systems, without the requirements for strict constraints, an accurate model and exact parameters [34].…”

“…The tool path adaptation for robotic deburring implemented usually needs to supplement extra equipment or processes, e.g., using a vision system described in [27,36] or direct teaching [29]. Other studies on the process parameter control for robotic deburring have certain constraints, e.g., the deburring tool is an abrasive diamond disc in the control strategy for the process parameter control, and other deburring tools are not considered [30]; the designed control action and implementation are more intricate, such as [25,31,32,34,36]; the procedure of the proposed approach is more complicated, such as [33]; or detailed deburring process parameters such as robotic feed and spindle speed for the deburring industrial robot are not considered [35].…”