A Robotic Milling System Based on 3D Point Cloud

Abstract

Industrial robots have advantages in the processing of large-scale components in the aerospace industry. Compared to CNC machine tools, robot arms are cheaper and easier to deploy. However, due to the poor consistency of incoming materials, large-scale and lightweight components make it difficult to automate robotic machining. In addition, the stiffness of the tandem structure is quite low. Therefore, the stability of the milling process is always a concern. In this paper, the robotic milling research is carried out for the welding pre-processing technology of large-scale components. In order to realize the automatic production of low-conformity parts, the on-site measurement–planning–processing method is adopted with the laser profiler. On the one hand, the laser profiler hand–eye calibration method is optimized to improve the measurement accuracy. On the other hand, the stiffness of the robot’s processing posture is optimized, combined with the angle of the fixture turntable. Finally, the experiment shows the feasibility of the on-site measurement–planning–processing method and verifies the correctness of the stiffness model.