Fabricação de protótipos por fresamento utilizando robôs antropomórficos

Abstract

The manufacturing of mechanical casings for low-cost functional prototypes with esthetical value is a challenge and one of its reasons is closely related with the materials often applied. Fiber reinforced polymers are a good choice for good-looking design allied to low-cost but it brings the necessity of manufacturing a die. A attractive way for the manufacturing of a die is generate it from its virtual model. This can be made with the aid of CAD/CAM systems associated with CNC machines. The machines generally used for these tasks, milling, are known as machining centers and its hourly costs are usually high. Considering the raise of the number of anthropomorphic robots in technology centers, the use of them for machining operations could be an interesting choice to reduce the costs in the manufacturing of fiber molding dies. This work presents the development of a post-processor capable of convert the CAM neutral file language, containing milling process technological information, to a language that a robot understands. It was used the tools of the Unigraphics NX5 CAD/CAM system and the robot which was to run the programs generated were ABB IRB 2400L. At the end a validation test was performed in which a resin test-piece was milled with the cited robot. Dimensional and form errors resulted from the machining, nevertheless they were small, not affecting the achieving of the main goal of this work, making an anthropomorphic robot guide a cutting tool with instructions generated by a CAD/CAM system from the virtual model of a part.