User-friendly automatic polishing robot system and its remote operation based on network

Polishing a die that has free-form surfaces is a time-consuming and tedious job, and requires a considerable amount of high-precision skill. Some workers tend to gradually avoid the polishing work because of the poor working conditions caused by dust and noise. In order to reduce the polishing time and cope with the shortage of skilled workers, this study developed an automatic polishing system. The developed polishing system with five degrees of freedom is able to keep the polishing tool normal to the die surface during the polishing process. The developed polishing system is able to reduce the steps in the polishing process and improve the surface roughness and waviness. However, the problem remains that a worker must stay to monitor the polishing process in the poor working conditions for a long time. Thus, this study constructed a communication network and developed monitoring programs (a servo program and a client program) to operate the polishing robot system from remote sites. The monitoring programs consist of 5 modules: the polishing module, the graphic simulator module, the polishing data generation module, the vision module, and the teaching module through the network. In order to evaluate the performance of the polishing system and the stability of the monitoring programs, the polishing experiment of the saddle-shape die was performed. The experimental results showed that the developed system provided a reliable performance and a stable communication.