With the recent advancement on robotics and CAD/CAM technologies, an articulated robot has been applied as a multi-axis CNC machine for producing complex/large prototypes. However, the single-robot machining technology can only offer limited machining capability due to its limited degrees of freedom, restricted reach and inherent singular points. To overcome the problems, a dual-robot machining workcell has been developed. The development of the dual-robot machining workcell is presented in this paper. It consists of three main parts, namely: kinematic modelling; postprocessor development; dual-robot program generatiol; and implementation of the system. In addition, an experiment study was conducted to verify the current prototyping capability of the dual-robot machining workcell. From the results of prototyping sculptured surfaces, the dual-robot machining shows greater advantages over single-robot machining. The result shows that the proposed scheme is an effective approach to complement existing CNC and single-robot machining technologies for prototype production.
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