AMRC develops world's most accurate large volume machining robot

The highly accurate robot milling system could take some of the workload off expensive machine tools, alleviating a bottleneck on the production line, its developers say.

Researchers at the University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC) with Boeing, with support from the Aerospace Technology Initiative (ATI), have modified an off-the-shelf KUKA Titan robot to develop the robotic milling system, in an £850,000 project.

The robot is capable of machining parts with an accuracy of below 100 microns. This is less than the accuracies of around 20-50 microns and below achievable with high-end machine tools, but a significant improvement on existing robots, according to Chris Greaves, operations manager of the AMRC’s Integrated Manufacturing Group at Factory 2050.

“We see a big benefit in having a large flexible tool like a robot being able to do accurate milling,” he said. “Machine centres are often bottlenecks in factories, you might have a £10m machine tool with a large working area, and a lot of its time it is doing roughing cuts,” he said.