Machining with robots

    I'm working on a simple CAM to robot translation program and was wondering how many people were machining with fanuc robots and what type they are using. The company I work for is machining aluminum extrusions up to 8mm thick using F200 robots.

    Which program?


    Unless your tolerances are wide open, I would not recommend it. A robot is not a mill. It is nowhere near as rigid. Your money would be better spent on a cheap Hass.


    Also, robots are not accurate. They are repeatable, but not accurate. Don't expect to drop in a program and get perfect parts the first time. They require a lot of fudging of the path.

    Check out the Fanuc position converter I wrote here! Now open source!

    Check out my example Fanuc Ethernet/IP Explicit Messaging program here!

    The program I'm referring to is one I've written to convert g-code to robot tp code. Its similar to Fanuc's Shape-gen but accepts input from any cam software. The main reason I'm using this vs Octopuz or equivalent is I've programmed in a crude cutter compensation to adjust for the robot rigidity and accuracy.


    I'm fully aware of the limitations of the F200, which is basically just 6 ballscrews. I know they have a small market so I'm guessing your experience is more from a typical R2000 or equivalent. For my application a typical cnc (10 in the shop) are too slow, so we have 20+ F200's. The components I'm machining have quite large tolerances .010" size, .040" TP. Basically just different shapes and features machined into an aluminum extrusion.


    I mainly just curious if anyone else is machining with an F200 or the more standard robots. What works, what does not. Things like that.

    The F200 is a special model that is definitely capable of machining aluminium. It is more rigid than an articulated arm robot.


    I have done some light aluminum machining with some of the other arms, but is definitely not straightforward like programming a CNC.

    Screenshot of my program. Currently working for the F200. I have not tested on an R2000. Requires Karel and Roboguide. Roboguide is used to compile the code using the command prompt utilitys.


    If you use a CNC controlled robot where you compensate for the material and tool dependent process forces that push the robot TCP away from it's path, you can even get a workpiece quality of +-0.2mm on a complex part in aluminum. This is quite good to keep the roughing tolerances for a machine tool


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