A Magnetically Pressed Polishing Tool for a Die Finishing Robot

Abstract

Three dimensional die surface is usually finished by manual lapping and polishing. More than 30% of manufacturing time is said to be usually spent on these operations for making the molding die of plastics. To automate them by a finishing robot, the polishing tool which is pressed on the die surface by magnetic attraction has been developed. This tooling device is very light in weight and very compact in size, being simply composed of a magnet and a magnetic grindstone. The normal component of the polishing force is given by the magnetic attraction force between the magnet and the surface of die which is made of ferromagnetic substance. So this enables a robot to polish the die surface without a normal force but only with a tangential force to slide the grindstone. And the axis of the tool is kept normal to the surface of itself. So it is expected that by installing this tooling device to a simple robot which has only two degrees of freedom, we can achieve the automatic polishing which has been considered to be very difficult.