REAL-TIME IDENTIFICATION OF BURR SIZE AND LOCATION FOR ROBOTIC DEBURRING PROCESS

1 . A process of deburring a workpiece comprising:

installing a workpiece onto a machine table proximate a robot, said workpiece having a surface, said robot having at least one force sensor and a spindle load sensor associated with a spindle coupled to a cutting tool, said robot having at least one joint configured to be actuated by a joint actuator; said robot being coupled to a controller;

generating joint encoder signals with said controller, said joint encoder signals configured to direct the joint actuator;

sensing contact forces between the cutting tool of the robot and the surface of the workpiece;

determining a deburring path of the cutting tool to deburr the workpiece; and

controlling the robotic deburring process by use of said joint encoder signals, a physics based model of burr size and material removal, a nominal trajectory of said cutting tool center point position, and an actual trajectory of said cutting tool center point position.

2 . The process according to claim 1 , wherein sensing contact forces comprises determining a spindle torque with said spindle load sensor.

3 . The process according to claim 1 , wherein sensing contact forces comprises determining at least one force signal with said force sensor.

4 . The process according to claim 1 , further comprising:

calculating said actual trajectory of said cutting tool center point position based on said joint encoder signals.

5 . The process according to claim 1 , further comprising:

determining a physics based model of burr size and material removal.

6 . The process according to claim 1 , further comprising:

determining the nominal trajectory of said cutting tool center point position.

7 . The process according to claim 1 , further comprising:

determining the actual trajectory of said cutting tool center point position.

8 . The process according to claim 1 , further comprising:

equating a deburring path to said nominal trajectory of said cutting tool center point position, wherein said deburring path is based on a computer aided design model of the workpiece.

9 . The process according to claim 1 , further comprising:

extracting said joint encoder signals from said controller.

10 . The process according to claim 9 , further comprising:

calculating said actual trajectory of the deburring path based on robot kinematics derived from the joint encoder signals.

11 . The process according to claim 1 , further comprising:

said controller maintaining a prescribed contact load of the cutting tool on the surface.

12 . The process according to claim 1 , further comprising:

said controller correcting said tool path and maintaining a predetermined contact load between said tool and said workpiece surface with a real-time force control.

13 . The process according to claim 1 , further comprising:

determining a burr size by calculating inputs from the spindle load sensor, wherein a spindle load is proportional to the material removal.

14 . The process according to claim 13 , further comprising:

utilizing said spindle load as a threshold value to identify a burr size.

15 . The process according to claim 14 , further comprising:

determining a location and a size of said burr.

16 . The process according to claim 15 , further comprising:

utilizing said location of said burr and said size of said burr to guide a path for removal of leftover large burrs.

17 . The process according to claim 1 , further comprising:

determining a position and an orientation of said cutting tool with respect to a base of said robot.