Hybrid manufacturing scheme for metal using robot and CNC machine This paper presents a hybrid layered manufacturing process combining the best features of both robotic additive manufacturing and CNC machining approaches. Compare to the conventional manufacturing process, the advantage of the hybrid manufacturing system is that material can be added and subtracted, ad infinitum until a desirable product has been achieved. A slicing algorithm is developed to generate the contour toolpaths along the boundary of the designed model, and these contour curves of each sliced layer are offset to preserve geometrical accuracy. For the internal area of the layer, zigzag toolpaths are adopted to simplify computing processes and speed up fabrication. The hardware integration of this system is described in detail, including the design and use of each subsystem, and the control scheme of the entire system. Finally, a series of experiments are carried out to obtain suitable processing parameters, and an industrial case is conducted subsequently proving the viability of the hybrid system.

RobotBased Machining of Unmodeled Objects via Feature Detection in Dense Point Clouds Machining applications using robots are still not common in industrial settings. Reasons are the unintuitive programming concepts which typically require expert knowledge and the inflexibility regarding small alterations of the workpieces. We present a prototypical solution for an intuitive and flexible robotic machining concept for unmodeled work pieces. For this we use a high resolution laser scanner to record very dense point clouds. Algorithms to detect linear edges with obtuse angled corners, linear edges with acute angled corners, linear inner edges and circular edges were developed, demonstrated and validated. To accurately execute generated trajectories in practice, an algorithm to directly calibrate the transformation between the sensor and the milling tool was developed. For the algorithms and the calibration process a repeatability tolerance of 0.2 mm is achieved.