Machining Robot with Vibrational Motion and 3D Printer-like Data Interface

In this paper, a vibration motion control is proposed and implemented on a foamed polystyrene machining robot to suppress the generation of undesirable cusp marks, and the basic performance of the controller is verified through machining experiments of foamed polystyrene. Then, a 3 dimensional (3D) printer-like data interface is proposed for the machining robot. The 3D data interface enables to control the machining robot directly using stereolithography (STL) data without conducting any computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) process. This is done by developing a robotic preprocessor that helps to remove the need for the conventional CAM process by directly converting the STL data into cutter location source data called cutter location (CL) or cutter location source (CLS) data. The STL is a file format proposed by 3D systems, and recently is supported by many computer aided design (CAD)/CAM softwares. The STL is widely used for rapid prototyping with a 3D printer which is a typical additive manufacturing system. The STL deals with a triangular representation of a curved surface geometry. The developed 3D printer-like data interface allows to directly control the machining robot through a zigzag path, rectangular spiral path and circular spiral path generated according to the information included in STL data. The effectiveness and usefulness of the developed system are demonstrated through actual machining experiments.