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3D-Printing with Robotstudios/ABB Robot

hamsi
hamsi ✭
in RobotStudio
Hello everyone,
I am a student of a University in Germany and I am studying mechanical engineering.

In one of our projects we try to do 3D-Printing with a ABB-Robot. The Robot hols a baseplate, on which we will print, and a fixiated Extruder on the top extrudes the material.

Our task is to create a Post-Processor, which should be able to translate the NC-Code of a CAD-File, which we create with Slic3r, into RAPID.
We have a IRC5 and the Robot is a IRB 140. The extruder has a stepper motor (NEMA17) which moves the matieral through the extruder gland.

Our problem is:
We tried to implent the extruder into RobotStudio but were lost in the many configurations. A RobotStudio extension named "CAMConverter" in the "Machining PowePac" should be able to convert the commands of G-Code into RAPID, but what happens is, that only the movement is translated and the arguments for the extruder are lost.
Example:
One line of the G-Code says "G1 X55.754 Y111.413 E14.92442"
The movement of X and Y coordinates are translated in RAPID, but the argument "E14.92442", which says how much material is extruded, gets lost in the translation.

Our idea was to write a own program with a Java, C# etc. and take the G-Code, that we get from Slic3r, split the parameter "E" which says how much material gets extruded (see above) and the part that tells the robot how to move (X, Y) and translate the part for the movement separately into RAPID. For the parameter "E" we put a DigitalOutput which moves the stepper motor and with that the material.

Do you have a better idea how to solve this problem, maybe by using RobotStudio and not having to write a own program ?

I would appreciate to see your ideas, because we really have a hard time trying to find a solution.

Thanks in advance,
hamsi

Comments

  • Tunski
    Tunski ✭
    I suggest that you go with your idea creating g-gode to rapid parser. Parser should propably use some default tool orientation and conficuration. After you have created rapid code you take it to robotstudio and define appropriate tool orientation and configuration to robot. And then load it to real robot.

    We had similar plans for one case. I'm not that familiar with Machining PP but if you're not able to modify Camconverter somehow there is no help.

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