Project looks to develop robots for precise machine milling

One of the key goals of the near-complete European COMET project is to develop robots that can compete against five-axis machine tools.

‘Up to now the problem with robots has been that they’re not quite accurate enough; they’re somewhere in the 2–5mm range,’ said Roland Krain of project partner TEKS. ‘If you calibrate it you can probably get down to a millimetre but it’s still not quite good enough for machining.’

The major current obstacles for fully automated machining are play, mechanical flexibility, thermal effects and particularly backlash.

‘A lot of companies have got robots that handle parts that need to be milled, but if they want to do milling they have to spend between £90,000 and £150,000 on a five-axis machine tool,’ Krain said. ‘If we can add a high-quality spindle into the mix, the robot is already there and so suddenly you’ve got a milling solution for a fraction of the cost — if we can get the accuracy of course.’