Automatic Robot Taping: Strategy and Enhancement

Abstract

Taping, covering the surfaces of objects with masking tapes, is a common process before conducting surface treatments like plasma spraying and painting. Manual taping is tedious and takes a lot of effort of the workers. The taping process is a special process which requires correct tape orientation and proper allocation of the masking tape for the coverage. We have introduced an automatic robot taping system consisting of a robot manipulator, a rotating platform, a 3D scanner and a specially designed novel taping end-effectors. With proper taping path planning methods, the taping of cylindrical and freeform surfaces have been achieved. With improvements on new sets of taping tools and path planning method, taping of general surfaces can be conducted using such system in future. This paper talks about the overall system design and discusses on the improvements needed to make the system available for parts with more general geometries. With further improvements, such taping solution with the taping tool and the taping methodology can be combined as a very useful and practical taping package to replace the work of human in such tedious and time consuming works.