While mold making is an important industry in Hong Kong,and mold makers are fast in employing advanced manufacturing technologies into mold making,mold finishing remains labour intensive and time consuming.In view that existing machine tool type CNC polishing devices may not be suitable for local mold makers,an approach of robotic mold polishing is introduced in this paper.The physical setup ocnsists of a small srticulated robot and a polishign spindle fixed to a compliant end-effector mounting.The Knowledge of mold polishing experts and the geometric model of the mold surface are utilized for automatic polishing tool path generation.Initial experiments are performed which demonstrate the successful reductin of surface roughness from 0.4#um#m to mirror finishing of 0.008 #um#m.
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