Investigation of wheel polishing technology based on industrial robot

In this paper, industrial robot is used as motion carrier and self-developed flexible wheel tool is used as polishing tool to realize low-cost, high-efficiency, and high-precision optical processing. Firstly, the mapping formula between the workpiece coordinates and the road point coordinates is deduced, and the position and posture data required for robot programming are obtained. Secondly, a new type of wheel polishing tool is designed, which controls the polishing pressure through a pneumatic floating structure to ensure the stability of the removal function. Finally, an off-axis paraboloid of φ345mm was processed using this technology. After three times of processing for 10 hours, the surface error converged from PV-2.111λ, RMS-0.249λ to PV-0.119λ, RMS-0.01λ. PV and RMS converged by 94% and 96%, respectively. This proves that the technology has the advantages of high efficiency and high precision, and is expected to be widely used in the field of precision optical processing.