Design of cam-interfaces for two robots based incremental sheet metal forming

Abstract

Robot based incremental sheet metal forming (Roboforming) is an innovative die less forming process, which is developed by the Chair of Production Systems at Ruhr-University Bochum. Suitable for rapid prototyping and manufacture of small batch sizes with low costs, this forming process is based on flexible shaping through the synchronous movement of two tools hold by two industrial robots. Since there is no existing solution to quickly and accurately generate two synchronized tool paths according to the will of users, the research of this method should first be focused on the tool path generation. In this paper, different forming strategies and their algorithms of generating synchronized path points are explained at first. Based on these established algorithms, three approaches to create CAMinterfaces for the generation of robot programs are introduced thereafter. Depending on different users, they are individually based on postprocessors, Application Program Interface (API) and a stand-alone program. Each introduced approach for Roboforming is validated by forming experiments and they also give a good reference to the third-party development of a CAD/CAM-system. © Springer-Verlag London 2013.