Potential of Robot-Guided Centrifugal Disc Finishing

Centrifugal disc finishing is a free abrasive grinding process characterised by high material removal rates compared to the widely used vibratory finishing. The process is used for deburring and surface polishing of workpieces. In conventional unguided centrifugal disc finishing, the workpieces are machined freely movable within a bulk of flowing abrasive media. In this study, the robot-guided centrifugal disc finishing is presented in which the workpieces are guided by an industrial robot. Based on finishing experiments, it is found that the material removal rate of robot-guided centrifugal disc finishing is significant higher compared to unguided centrifugal disc finishing. Therefore, robot-guided centrifugal disc finishing can be used for time efficient deburring and surface finishing operations. Furthermore, a material removal model based on the discrete element method is presented. The model is valid for both, unguided and robot-guided centrifugal disc finishing. Thus, the model can be used as a universal tool to design centrifugal disc finishing processes without using a time and cost intensive trial and error approach.