Off-Line Programming of a Robot for Laser Re-Manufacturing

Off-line programming provides an essential link for CAD/CAM. This paper introduced the principle of developing off-line programming system for laser re-manufacturing. Task and information flow of off-line programming for laser re-manufacturing robot was analyzed and the software structure of off-line programming based on commercial CAD software was constructed. The off-line programming system developed in this study includes 3-D solid model design, direct slicing for obtaining path data, graphical simulation of the robot and its workcell, kinematic model of the robot, motion planning, and creation of the control program for manufacturing process. The CAD software was used to design models of robot, workpiece, coaxial nozzle, and workspace. Through the application programming interface provided by the CAD software, the VC++ and ATL were chosen to develop such modules as direct slicing for obtaining path data, path planning, process specification, and control program automatic generation. The FANUC Roboguide software was used to realize graphical simulation. By direct slicing, the position and orientation data of robot end-effector was determined. The results show that the proposed system can be applied in laser re-manufacturing robot for manufacturing operations.