Virtual environment in control and programming system for reconfigurable machining robot

Abstract

Robotic machining systems play an important role in modern manufacturing. The paper proposes the application of virtual robots for off-line programming. The reconfigurable machining robot, programmed in G-code, which can be directly used by CNC machine tool programmers and operators, is presented. The subject of study are 5- and 6-DOF vertical articulated robots that can be configured to emulate vertical and horizontal 5-axis spindle tilting machine tools. The considered machining systems are supported by equivalent virtual robots in the CAD/CAM environment and control system. Several test workpieces were machined to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed architecture.