Polishing of Mould Surfaces

Finishing of mould surfaces is in most cases made by manual labour. It is an extremely laborious operation which demands a lot of time, so it is very expensive. The mechanisation or robot application seems to be a possible solution. The term of mechanisation is to recognise the relationship between the waviness, striation and roughness of the surfaces before and after the machining. So, the type of the tool, the cutting speed, feed rate and the radial force between the surface of the workpiece and the tool can be determined. To detect the connections and to determine the cutting parameters rubbing and polishing experiments are made on flat workpieces made of several structural materials prepared by different cutting methods. The results and experiences can be used during the polishing by robots. It could be a faster and more economical solution of the finishing of mould surfaces than the actual employed method. Instead of applying human force to automate this process a robot with the polishing tool is introduced. The data needed for generating the polishing path are taken from both the postprocessor of a CAD system and a control program. To firm the optimal cutting conditions the pushing force between the tool and the workpiece surface needed to be controlled. An open structured robot control method is the solution of this task