What's new
What's new

Anybody seen a motoman robot follow a cad/cam contouring type of movement sequence?

powerglider

Stainless
Joined
Oct 13, 2006
Location
Mediapolis, Iowa
Curious about an application where a robot such as a motoman kr series could be used to contour to some pretty loose tolerance for an end result of a “sculpted” piece?

For example if you fastened a router at the end of the robot arm and used say 3 different router bits, could it sculpt a faceted end piece (picture a dog size piece of foam)?

Anybody ever seen a video of something similar? Links?

Program code would be from some kind of drip feed laptop like we often see on limited memory based cnc milling machines?
 
Ive got a UP50 with XRC control. There is a gibbscam Motosim plug in available from motoman that lets you run the arm as a multiaxis cutting machine. At least thats what the literature indicates. It acts like a post processor and creates motoman compatible programs directly from gibbs. I got a quote of 1000 for the plugin directly from motoman about 2 years ago. You have to have Motosim or Motosim EG (offline programming software) to use it (I think). Not sure if its required or if I got a better quote as I already owned a seat of Motosim. XRC control is the minimum that will work. I may get it to try out later in the year. WIll post results if I do
 
I've seen this done since the 70-80s.
Don't know if I've seen a Motoman but have seen many.
Once upon a time you programmed all robots in G-code.

The problem is defection out on the end. Robots are not "stiff" like machine tools.
Foam is a big plus over trying to cut steel.
The thing with robots is the fact that everything rotates and then you get errors due to distance away from the pivot point. (witness Faro arms vs CMM machines)

For sure what you state can be done If the tolerance fits the robot.
 
Most 6 axis robots have good repeatability (order of 20-50 microns) but absolutely garbage accuracy (order of 2000 microns) which makes doing it... difficult.

This sort of thing will get you there. Robot calibration - RoboDK

But if you're just trying to carve a dog sized piece of foam, why not just use a CNC router?
 
But if you're just trying to carve a dog sized piece of foam, why not just use a CNC router?

How cheap or common are 5 and plus axis cnc routers this size?
A robot can get around the back side a router never will and into spots even a 5 axis machine can not.
The "spindle in a robot hand" has been the elusive dream of so many.
It seems like it should be so doable and easy. Then...the devils in the details.

With a mapped robot it's not such a crazy idea in foam since deflection won't be a deal killer.
I think the software pre-processor would have to be very custom and not for the light hearted.
Bob
 
A... lot more common and cheaper than what's being discussed here?

I doubt you're going to get meaningfully better performance than a shopbot 5 axis (read: real-damn-bad-but-not-useless) that costs $45k new ShopBot 5 Axis Tools

If someone can get equivalent performance out of a 6 axis robot (all new parts, and I'll even allow them a rental on the laser tracker) for less money I'd hire them on the spot.
 
I doubt you're going to get meaningfully better performance than a shopbot 5 axis (read: real-damn-bad-but-not-useless) that costs $45k new ShopBot 5 Axis Tools
We sold a Forest-Line 5-axis gantry that shoulda been better. A lot better :) And it wasn't that expensive ...

If someone can get equivalent performance out of a 6 axis robot (all new parts, and I'll even allow them a rental on the laser tracker) for less money I'd hire them on the spot.
Whatever happened to the spiderman things ? Almost infinite axes on three sets of ballscrews ? I thought those were the coolest, can't the highly-advanced software keep up with the geometry ? I forget the name but Giddings & Lewis built one, along with one or two other places.
 
We sold a Forest-Line 5-axis gantry that shoulda been better. A lot better :) And it wasn't that expensive ...


Whatever happened to the spiderman things ? Almost infinite axes on three sets of ballscrews ? I thought those were the coolest, can't the highly-advanced software keep up with the geometry ? I forget the name but Giddings & Lewis built one, along with one or two other places.


You talking about the Hexapod Mills?

Yeah, they're neat to look at.

YouTube
 
They are neat. I wonder why they have never caught on ?

I think the basic design sees a lot of use in pick-and-place robots (light duty), as well as in motion platforms (low precision requirements). But for machine tool use it may be that the relative limited positional envelope coupled with programming issues makes it less attractive.
 
Panasonic or fanuc had one at fabtech a few years ago pushing a form drill. It looked like a giant snake with overkill amount of axis so it could drill/tap a hole on the other side of a car door, where it went thru the window hole.
 








 
Back
Top