Implementation of a robot system for sculptured surface cutting. Part 1. Rough machining

Rapid prototyping plays an important role in product development. There are two ways to realise rapid prototyping: one is to develop new prototyping e quipment such as stereolithography apparatus (SLA), selective laser sinteri ng (SLS), etc., and the other is to improve existing CNC techniques. In thi s work, a robot system for rapid prototyping, which is an enhancement of th e CNC based method, is presented. A robot arm holding a milling tool is use d to machine the prototype of a solid model drawn using a commercial CAD sy stem. In this paper, Part 1, a strategy using the robot for rough machining is discussed and then an automatic tool-path generation method using a gri d height array is presented. This method can generate tool paths for rough machining with different tolerances. As a verification of the proposed algo rithm, a number of prototypes have been produced, which have demonstrated t he feasibility and advantages of the algorithm. In a companion paper, Part 2, an approach to represent C-space by incorporating possible variations in tooling orientations is proposed. In order to reduce error on complex surf aces resulting from undercut or overcut operations, a curvature-matching al gorithm is developed. Finally, experimental work using the collision-free p lanning strategy and simulation for the curvature matching algorithm is car ried our.