The de-burring of combustion chambers for aircraft engines is about as complex a machining job as it gets, requiring tracing detailed trajectories over more than 600 features, using 3 or 4 different tools on each. AV&R has developed a broad range of expertise in enabling robots to perform complex tasks such as this, achieving high repeatability, increased speed and enhanced precision. But manually programming the robot is a painstaking job. Aerospace manufacturers are under extreme pressure to reduce new product introduction times. “We needed to shorten the path teaching cycle; there had to be a better way.”

Robots are often underestimated in manufacturing circles as being inaccurate and dismissed as only suitable for welding or pick and place applications. With better accuracy machine designs and improved calibration methods now allowing robots to provide tolerances of 0.1mm/0.005in or less, robots are no longer uncommon in machining type applications. In addition, off-line programming (OLP) suites offer features that can take advantage of better robot tolerances and produce robot trajectories from CAD/CAM data. “Being able to create toolpaths directly from our designer's solid CAD models has significantly improved the accuracy of our carbon fiber components.”

Carnegie Mellon University School of Architecture in Pittsburgh has consistently ranked in the top ten professional architecture degree programs, with a reputation for being “THE” architecture school and for constantly experimenting with different technological applications and techniques. In 2007, CMU Associate Professor Jeremy Ficca founded the School’s Digital Fabrication Lab (dFAB) to provide a venue through which students and faculty could gain experience with the new reality of advanced digital design and manufacturing processes in architecture. The Lab acquired a 6-axis ABB IRB4400 and added a rotary table as an integrated 7th axis. The team wanted to use the robot to transform complex 3D designs from concept to physical reality in machine foam and other soft materials. With the robot cell in place, it quickly became clear that the challenge of its programming would be the limiting factor - the creative projects inspired by the Lab required programming that would take too long to generate or was simply impossible to program manually. dFAB began to search for the best tools and methodologies to quickly and accurately deliver their projects with the robot.

Daimler wanted to develop a hammer peening process for polishing the stamping dies used to manufacture body panels for Mercedes-Benz cars. A robot was essential to the process. Little did the automaker know how difficult it would be to program a robot to handle the millions of toolpath calculations required for this intensive process. Conventional software tools were not up to the task. A three-year collaboration between Daimler and Robotmaster resulted in a robust software solution that not only made the programming for these large, complex dies easy and error-free, it reduced offline programming time by 70 percent. Once they had a foolproof solution for hammer peening, Daimler broadened their sights to other robotic processes. Laser hardening, laser cladding, and induction hardening also proved to be a great match with Robotmaster’s single software solution.

Flow Applications manufactures and integrates six-axis robot systems into automotive interior trim applications such as floor carpeting, door panels and instrument panels. The company is forging new ground with off-line programming to eliminate costly downtime. Using CAD/CAM-based programming, a job that may have taken half a day to program in the past can now take as little as 15 minutes and operators and machines can remain in production.

General Atomics had acquired an impressive waterjet robotic work cell - an ideal solution for trimming the 30-foot carbon/epoxy composite wing assemblies of their unmanned aircraft system (UAS). When it came time to upload cutting patterns from their CAD files however, they came to the disconcerting realisation that developing tool trajectories for a 7-axis robot work cell directly from CAD was uncharted territory. The significant investment made in their robot equipment, as well as their capability to satisfy their production commitments, was at risk.

The latest robotic technology, state of the art processing equipment and an environmentally friendly, healthy and safe business approach are not what might be readily associated with the stone quarrying industry, but at JWQ (Johnson Wellfield Quarries) in Huddersfield investment in new facilities and a desire to produce sustainable engineered, natural stone, has significantly extended capabilities for this 150 year old quarry.

McStarlite uses a KUKA robot programmed with Robotmaster® to perform polishing (jitterbug) of the inlet lipskins for the A350 Airbus, the first large commercial aircraft to be constructed extensively from carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFPR).

In 2008, ORTHOPEDIE BONTOUX, a company that has specialised in the manufacture and adaptation of orthopedic and prosthetic apparatus (orthoses and prostheses) since 1982, created its subsidiary OSIC-CARBONE. “We decided to transform our organisation to address the challenges we perceived to be facing our profession. We were widely recognised for the superior performance of our apparatus, manufactured of composite materials, but our business vision had identified revolutionary changes we considered necessary to the entire delivery process, from the precise measurements made of the patient through the rapid production of molds and apparatus. This logically led us to consider a robotic solution for our milling needs. With increased degrees of freedom and reduced physical constraints, the range of movement of the milling robot was an excellent match to the wide variety of size of parts on which we needed to work.

Weber Aircraft is one of the leading manufacturers of commercial aircraft seats for airlines and major aircraft manufacturers worldwide. In recent years, they have faced tremendous downward pressure on price while being determined to maintain their excellent and hard-earned reputation for product quality and customer satisfaction. A robotic-based routing cell was the right technical and economic answer to meet these objectives, but integrating the robot workcell into their existing manufacturing engineering process was a problem. Weber needed to be able to program their robot with the same ease, flexibility and efficiency as they programmed their CNC machines.

Never ones to shy away from attention, robots are striking a formidable pose on the material removal stage. Robots are taking it off, stripping it down and smoothing it out. Whether machining or finishing, robotic material removal is being used to cut, grind, deburr and polish all sorts of materials, from food to wood to jet engine components. Recent technological advances have helped bridge the gap between traditional CNC machining and robotic material removal. Some would even say that robotic finishing is a maturing segment. Robotic machining still has a ways to go before it joins the mainstream ranks. In a 2008 white paper, the authors noted two major challenges to widespread adoption of robotic machining. One barrier was the lack of rigidity in the robot arm. The second was the inability to easily translate CAD programming into robot paths. The robotics industry has worked hard to shed these barriers. Most of the major robot manufacturers offer robots specifically designed for greater rigidity. Robot OEMs and other software developers offer simulation and CAD-to-path software that make programming more seamless and precise. Plus a host of specialized end-of-arm tooling (EOAT), force control technology, and other accuracy tools are raising the game.

The use of industrial robots to automate such shop-floor tasks as debugging, trimming, polishing and welding, and also for performing rapid prototyping, machining and waterjet cutting with a single part setup, is becoming increasingly common and popular. Until recently, however, the lack of available good programming solutions for robots was a limitation for manufacturers wanting to adopt robot technology for shop-floor, rather than production-line tasks. That changed when Jabez Technologies developed Robotmaster CAD/CAM software, now distributed within the European market by Intercam S.A.

Machining robots are growing in market demand owing to their attractiveness to manufacturing companies looking for a time- and money-saving alternative to CNC machine tools. Robotmaster software for programming 6-axis robots provides the same flexibility and speed as software used for programming CNC machine tools because it seamlessly integrates robot programming, simulation and code generation all within a CAD/CAM environment.

As robots become more popular for tasks which previously required CNC machines, software is appearing which supports the need for increased control and efficiency.