Abrasive tool making process – material – or composition – With carbohydrate or reaction product thereof
Patent
1987-04-21
1988-06-28
Whitehead, Harold D.
Abrasive tool making process, material, or composition
With carbohydrate or reaction product thereof
5116587, B24B 2700
Patent
active
047530448
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
The present invention relates to a machine for finishing cast or machined parts, particularly smoothing of rough edges, and/or brushing, and/or rubbing, and/or polishing, and/or grinding of these parts, comprising a closed container, at least one finishing unit equipped with a finishing tool of these parts, a programmable manipulator robot adapted to present at least one surface of each rough part to this finishing tool, under at least one predetermined orientation so as to subject it to at least one finishing operation.
The finishing machines currently in common use normally comprise a turning table carrying the elements to be finished and satellites positioned around this table constituting the finishing units. The rough parts are positioned on the turning table by a manual or automatic entry station, are successively presented to the different finishing units then removed from the table by a removal station. The number of parts mounted on the table is equal to the number of satellite finishing units, such that at each step of the turning table, all of the parts carried by the table are simultaneously treated by another finishing unit. After a complete rotation of the turning table, all of the parts are successively passed in front of all of the finishing units.
This apparatus, known for its efficiency and rapidity, is very useful in numerous cases. However, certain parts have complicated shapes, awkward surfaces, edges or shoulders etc., and the known machines do not allow for their finishing in the various satellite finishing units. The moveable supports of the parts, mounted on the turning table, do not have a sufficient mobility, do not allow for the displacement of the parts along a sufficient number of degrees of freedom and cannot present the parts under sufficiently diverse orientations to assure a complete finishing of the parts having irregular shapes, in the course of a single cycle of the machine or by a single take-up of these parts.
Furthermore, the moveable supports of the parts, as well as the control elements of these supports, cams, pneumatic cycles, etc., are constructed as a function of the shape of the parts and the displacements which it is necessary to impose on them to bring them into contact with the finishing units selected to obtain the surface treatment selected. It results that, for each type of part, the user must design a support and appropriate control elements, which considerably raises the cost of treatment of the manufactured parts, particularly those which are formed on relatively small scales.
Consequently, these machines are perfectly useful for the finishing of parts of simple shapes manufactured in large quantities, but are of lesser interest for smaller production runs by virtue precisely of the elevated cost of studying and developing the specific supports adapted to these parts. Furthermore, complicated parts cannot be treated by these known machines.
To overcome these disadvantages, finishing centers have been developed comprising a programmable manipulator robot adapted to present the parts to be machined to a certain number of finishing units. The known finishing centers comprise however a central manipulator robot positioned on a fixed support and the finishing units are themselves mounted on fixed supports positioned around the manipulator robot.
The type of manipulator robot utilized has only a relatively limited number of degrees of freedom and does not make it possible to bring into contact with the said finishing tools objects having particularly complex shapes. Furthermore, a regular surveillance is indispensable to allow an operator to adjust the finishing units in position, as a function of the wear of the finishing tools.
The present invention proposes bringing a remedy to all of the above-mentioned inconveniences by providing a universal finishing machine, adapted to assure in an economical fashion the finishing of parts manufactured in small series, in particular of parts having complex shapes.
To this end, the machine according to the invention i
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Article: "Robot Vision Adds Flexibility to Finishing", in the publication Tooling and Production, vol. 50, No. 1, E. E. Sprow.
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Bula & Fils S.A.
Whitehead Harold D.
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