Milling accuracy improvement of a 6-axis industrial robot through dynamic analysis : From datasheet to improvement suggestions

Sammanfattning: The industrial robot is a flexible and cheap standard component that can becombined with a milling head to complete low accuracy milling tasks. Thefuture goal for researchers and industry is to increase the milling accuracy, suchthat it can be introduced to more high value added operations.The serial build up of an industrial robot bring non-linear compliance andchallenges in vibration mitigation due to the member and reducer design. WithAdditive Manufacturing (AM), the traditional cast aluminum structure couldbe revised and, therefore, milling accuracy gain could be made possible due tostructural changes.This thesis proposes the structural changes that would improve the millingaccuracy for a specific trajectory. To quantify the improvement, first the robothad to be reverse engineered and a kinematic simulation model be built. Nextthe kinematic simulation process was automated such that multiple input parameterscould be varied and a screening conducted that proposed the mostprofitable change.It was found that a mass decrease in any member did not affect the millingaccuracy and a stiffness increase in the member of the second axis would increasethe milling accuracy the most, without changing the design concept. To changethe reducer in axis 1 would reduce the mean position error by 7.5 % and themean rotation error by 4.5 % approximately, but also reduces the maximumspeed of the robot. The best structural change would be to introduce twosupport bearings for axis two and three, which decreased the mean positioningerror and rotation error by approximately 8 % and 13 % respectively.