Hi guys, so i have a rather different then normal question for today.
Each year our we like to do something funny with our machine's during our end of year/Christmas party. Mostly it using machines like they where never intended too.Because we are a rotational mouldig company for this year i had the idea to use one of our Kuka KR150 (krc2 Kss 4. robots that is normally used for milling purposes as a rotation mould machine.
For people who dont know wat rotational moulding is, the principle is simple. Plastic powder is put into a mould and the mould is then heated and rotated over 2 axis. Plastic powder wil stick to the wall of the mould and after cooling you will have a nice hollow product.
My idea was to mount one of our molds to the robot and mount a gas burner in the cell. The burner i wil teach as a fixed tool (never done this before, so this could also be interesting) and then it is only a matter of programming the right motion. Here it becomes a bit tricky, if i want to replicate the exact motion of our machines the robot has to go through the flame at some point in its path. I think that this would not be a good idea. I have no idea what temperatures the robot can withstand but i would not push it over 50 Celsius.
The second thing i have to do where i have also no experience in is maken robot motions time dependent. When i have figured out the motion, the second thing would be to figure out at what speed the motion has to be carried out. The speed at which the mould rotates over its 2 axis is very important. do this wrong and the product could have thin spots or even holes. This motion i have to put into a subroutine and keep this subroutine looping until a specified amount of time has passed. Here comes the part that i am not sure how to proceed. when the timer ends i have to cancel the current motion completely, and start moving away from the flame. The easiest thing would be to let it finish its current path and then let the exit and cooling program run, only i am afraid that when the timer ends and the robot first needs to finish its current motion the product could be getting to hot and even start burning.
For me this is a nice opportunity to learn some robot programming that i normally never use, so i have someone has any suggestions on in what way to handle this please let me know. I will probably start next week trying to figure out the motion and working with a fixed tool. If you guys are interested i could keep you posted on the progress.