Trochoid milling with industrial robots

Abstract

The highly dynamic production puts the versatility of production systems in the center of industrial interests. Due to their flexibility and low energy consumption industrial robots are a big part of this development. They have been used as handling systems for decades and are already state of the art in this regard. This is not the case for other surrounding tasks such as milling. These systems have in comparison to conventional machine tools a relatively low stiffness c, which allows only low cutting forces Fc and therefore low feed rates fz and speeds vc. This leads to higher processing times and therefore to a higher energy consumption. A highly dynamic milling strategy, which results in significantly lower cutting forces Fc than in conventional milling and which at the same time has high cutting rates is trochoid milling. This paper shows the basic usability of this milling strategy on standard industrial robots. Furthermore, the challenges of the near future will be shown.