AWJ TRIMMING OF COMPOSITES AND CUTTING OF OTHER MATERIALS USING 6-AXIS ROBOTS

Abstract

Axis gantry robots and 6-axis articulated arm robots have been used with plain waterjets for many applications especially in the automotive industry. This paper is on extending the use of these robots to abrasive waterjets and for a much wider range of applications. The integration of the abrasive waterjet process on robotic arms has been successfully developed to address the end effector, supply of high pressure water and abrasives to the cutting head, and operational safety. Off line programming, calibration, and inspection are discussed. Advanced software packages typically used in the aerospace industry have been successfully adapted. The need for enhanced accuracy performance using first article inspection results is discussed. A few case studies are presented in this paper addressing composite trimming for wing skins used in aircraft and wind turbines and for stone cutting with hybrid processes. It was found that 6-axis robot arms can eas- ily be implemented when moderate accuracies, from 0.010 inch (0.25mm) to 0.015 inch (0.38mm) are specified. However, accurate calibration and first article inspection procedures were found necessary to obtain accuracies below 0.01 inch (0.25mm). Much tighter accuracies are achieved with stiff gantry systems.