Search

4K and 8K technologies are attracting attention in optical industries. The most important mechanical element to enhance the imaging performance is the aspherical lens requiring higher surface quality and higher form accuracy. Currently, the production process of optical lenses consists of brittle-mode grinding and pro-longed polishing process, which play a role of shaping the form and producing the fine surface, respectively. However, this process is not considered to be suitable for manufacturing such higher-quality lenses for 4K and 8K imaging devices because a required form accuracy could not be ensured, and the polishing time gets longer. To enhance the form accuracy and production efficiency, application of ductile-mode grinding is expected to reduce polishing amount. However, the shape error generated by the ductile mode grinding is not clear. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to analyze the relation between the shape error and the grinding force estimated from motor-current in the grinding machine. The motor-current acquisition system in all translational axes and the work spindle is constructed and implemented into a 4-axis ultra-precision aspherical machine. The grinding force in each axis is derived by subtracting the motor current during non-grinding previously obtained in air-grinding test from the current during grinding. Firstly, the behavior of the motor current in each axis is investigated from the viewpoint of repeatability and position dependency. While the periodic fluctuation of the motor current affected by the influence of permanent magnet in the linear motor is confirmed, it shows high repeatability at each position. This result indicated that grinding force is easily calculated from the motor current with less uncertainty. Then, influence of grinding condition in the range of ductile mode grinding on the shape error is analyzed by monitoring the motor current. Toward the outside of the workpiece, the shape error gradually increases with the increase of motor current, which means larger grinding force at the outer side causes the deformation of the resin grinding wheel.

Polishing is an important process performed in the finishing and repair processes of mechanical parts and is still a manual work of skilled workers. However, in addition to the time and cost required for manual polishing, there are also problems such as a decrease in the number of workers and health hazards due to dust generated during polishing. From these problems, the demand for automatic polishing is increasing at manufacturing sites. To automate polishing process, a macro-micro system based polishing robot which consists of a functional end-effector and industrial robot has been proposed. Regarding end effectors, mechanical design aiming for high rigidity and motion control methods for keeping the contact force constant is being researched. Meanwhile, the tool rotation speed of the spindle is independently controlled typically. Therefore, in this research, a functional polishing module capable of polishing force control and tool rotation control according to the tool feed rate is developed as the end effector. For the polishing automation, the macro-micro system based polishing robot is constructed attaching the polishing module to the industrial robot. From the viewpoint of Preston’s law, the effectiveness of the robot polishing is investigated through polishing experiments and measuring the shape of the polished surface.

In a fine mold manufacturing process, the polishing process plays an important role in enhancing the surface quality and is performed manually by skilled workers. However, there are many problems such as decrease in skilled workers, health hazards due to scattering of abrasives, and difference in surface quality due to difference in the proficiency. Hence, there is a strong demand for automation of the polishing process at present. In this research, a robot polishing system that applies macro-micro mechanism is proposed. The functional polishing module of the end effector is developed and attached to the hand of the serial link robot. Tool path and posture are controlled in a serial link robot as a macro mechanism, and polishing force and tool rotation speed are controlled in the developed polishing module as micro mechanism. This mechanism ideally controls position, force, and rotation speed at the same time. An interlocking control system for position and force has already been constructed. In this paper, we constructed gravity compensation and evaluated the force control performance of the constructed system. Through the evaluation, the followability of the estimated reaction force to the command force and the validity of the actual force behavior measured by the force sensor were evaluated.

Optical microcavity, which can localize light at a certain spot for a short period of time, have a wide range of applications, such as optical signal processing and optical frequency combs. Single crystal calcium fluoride is one of the most suitable material for fabricating optical microcavity due to its excellent optical properties; however, it cannot be manufactured by chemical processes such as etching due to its crystal anisotropy. Currently, high performance optical microcavities are fabricated by ultra-precision turning followed by a hand polishing process because it has complex shape with a size of micro order. However, hand polishing deteriorates the shape made by ultra-precision turning and has a low reproductivity. Therefore, a development of a soft mechanical polishing method to replace hand polishing is strongly desired. Electrically controlled slurry technique is a promising approach in polishing of microparts, where AC electric field is applied to the slurry in order to control the distribution of abrasives to improve the polishing properties in free abrasive polishing. In this study, polishing by applying electrically controlled slurry was conducted for microcavity and the influence of frequency and applied voltage were investigated. From the experimental results, clear differences in the surface quality of microcavity were shown according to amplitude of AC voltage and its frequency.

It is widely known that the spindle speed variation (SSV) is an effective technology for chatter suppression, especially in the turning or boring process. Its simple optimal design, however, is not a simple task. In the past, certain research works considered the chatter onset from the perspective of process energy balance in a vibration cycle. The phase shift between previous (i.e., outer modulation) and present vibrations (i.e., inner modulation) of chatter is a key factor in the process energy balance. The SSV can be conceptually interpreted as a technique that continuously perturbs the phase shift between the inner and outer modulations, thereby changing the process energy balance. Simply put, the chatter energy can be controlled by applying the SSV to suppress the chatter. This study investigates the correlation between the process energy balance and phase shift behavior in the sinusoidal SSV through numerical energy simulation. The results indicate that the phase shift at the maximum spindle speed is an important factor to minimize the total energy balance (i.e., to dissipate the chatter energy) in the SSV cycle. This probably corresponds to the fact that the beat vibration tends to occur near the maximum spindle speed in the SSV. The insights gained from this study are anticipated to serve as a guideline for shaping the phase shift profile in the SSV to effectively suppress chatter vibration.

External sensor-less cutting force estimation using a load-side disturbance observer (LDOB) has potential to estimate the cutting force with high accuracy in both feed and cross-feed directions. However, the accuracy of its low frequency components in feed direction decrease due to effect of the friction and heat of a ball-screw-driven stage. In this study, DC and AC components of the cutting force is estimated by different methods; friction-compensated motor thrust force and LDOB, and the cutting force was estimated in real time by hybridizing them. In particular, regarding the friction model, the dynamic and static characteristics of the friction force in each axis (X, Y, Z) were identified from the idling test results. In addition to the model that depends on the velocity, the characteristics of the friction that depend on the position was also identified and considered when compensating for the motor thrust force. Then, a simple moving average filter with an appropriate window length is applied to the cutting force by LDOB and motor thrust force, and the DC component error of LDOB is corrected by that of motor thrust force. The validity of the proposed method was evaluated through end-milling tests. The experimental results showed that estimation accuracy of cutting force using the proposed method can be greatly improved in feed directions. On the other hand, in cross-feed direction, the cutting estimation was performed using the conventional LDOB.

As the finishing process in manufacturing a fine mold, manual polishing is typically performed to enhance the surface quality. On the other hand, manual polishing causes increase in costs and health damage to the workers due to sucking polishing dusts. Hence, polishing automation is strongly required by utilizing industrial robots. Regarding robot polishing, highly responsive polishing pressure control is definitely needed so that macro-micro system integrating high-performance end-effector into the articulated robot could be an appropriate approach because response of the robot itself is not sufficiently high. From this viewpoint, the purpose of this study is to develop an end-effector having the ability to simultaneously control polishing force and tool spindle speed. The mechanism and control system of the end-effector are designed and experimentally evaluated. In terms of force control, observer-based force control, which does not require any additional force sensor, is implemented. The experimental results show that the developed end-effector successfully control polishing force with 0.1 N and bandwidth up to 23 Hz.

Additive manufacturing (AM) for metals has attracted attention from industry because of its great potential to enhance production efficiency and reduce production costs. Directed energy deposition (DED) is a metal AM process suitable to produce large-scale freeform metal products. DED entails irradiating the baseplate with a laser beam and launching the metal powder onto the molten spot to produce a metal part on the baseplate. Because the process enables powder from different materials to be used, DED is widely applicable to valuable production work such as for a dissimilar material joint, a graded material, or a part with a special structure. With regard to parts with a special structure, directional solidification can prospectively be used in the power plant and aerospace industries because it can enhance the stiffness in a specific direction via only a simple process. However, conventional approaches for directional solidification require a special mold in order to realize a long-lasting thermal gradient in the part. On the other hand, from the viewpoint of thermal distribution in a produced part, DED is able to control the gradient by controlling the position of the molten pool, i.e., the position of the laser spot. Moreover, unlike casting, the thermal gradient can be precisely oriented in the expected direction, because the laser supplies heat energy on the regulated spot. In this study, the applicability of DED to directional solidification in Inconel® 625 is theoretically and experimentally evaluated through metal structure observation and Vickers hardness measurements. Furthermore, the effect of two different cooling processes on directional solidification is also considered with the aim of improving the mechanical stiffness of a part produced by DED. The observations and experimental results show that both the cooling methods (baseplate cooling and intermittent treatment with coolant) are able to enhance the hardness while retaining the anisotropy.

Parallel turning attracts attention as one of the important technologies for the multi-tasking machine tools. This is because there is a potential to enhance the stability limits compared to turning operation using single tool when cutting conditions are properly selected. Although stability prediction models for parallel turning have been developed in recent years, in-process monitoring technique of chatter is almost out of focus. In this study, to suppress chatter vibration, unequal pitch turning method was proposed. In this method, the upper tool was controlled based on optimum pitch angle calculated from spindle speed and chatter frequency. Chatter frequency was identified from estimated cutting force by disturbance observer. From the result of parallel turning test, it is clear that chatter vibration can be suppressed by controlling the upper tool based on optimum pitch angle.

Cutting force is widely regarded as being the one of the most valuable information for tool condition monitoring. Considering sustainability, sensorless cutting force monitoring technique using inner information of machine tool attracts attention. Cutting force estimation based on motor current is one of the example, and it is applicable to detection of tool breakage with some signal processing technique. However, current signal could not capture fast variation of cutting force. By improving monitoring performance of cutting force, the hidden tool condition information is more accessible. In this study, monitoring performance of cutting force variation due to tool fracture was enhanced by using multi-encoder-based disturbance observer (MEDOB) and simple moving average. Friction force and torque which deteriorate monitoring performance was eliminated by moving average. First, monitoring accuracy of cutting force was verified through end milling test. Next, local peak value of estimated cutting force was extracted and the ratio of neighboring peak value was calculated to capture the tool fracture. Estimated value using MEDOB could capture the variation resulting from tool fracture.

In the painting process in automotive manufacturing, the repair polishing process is still done manually by a worker with a sufficient skilled technique. However, the number of skilled workers is decreasing with the aging. In addition, the polishing time and the surface quality after the repair polishing are dependent on the proficiency level of the worker. Thus, skill-independent automation technology for the repair polishing is required. In our past research, the serial-parallel mechanism polishing machine was developed for automating the polishing process. The developed machine can control the tool trajectory, tool posture and polishing force simultaneously. In addition, the polishing force is controlled without external sensors by the reaction force observer system. This study aims to develop a polishing automation method for unknown 3-dimensional curved surface by using the developed machine. First, the tool posture control method on unknown curved surface was proposed. Second, the normal force control method based on the posture information was proposed. By using these proposed methods simultaneously, the tool posture and polishing force were controlled in the normal direction on unknown 3-dimesional curved surface. From the experimental results, the validity of the proposed method was verified.Copyright © 2016 by ASME