Abstract
To achieve the optimum quality of thermal spray coating, the material must be applied by controlled, smooth and steady movement. This is best executed by robots. Complex geometries such as hydro turbine parts, hot gas casings or gas turbine blades are difficult to coat with common methods of robot programming such as teach-in. These methods take longer time and tedious calculations to generate robot coating paths. SoftART - a Switzerland based company - has developed a software-based offline programming process to produce robot paths quickly and accurate for an optimized coating result. Based on the 3D-model of the workpiece, the target points of the robot are calculated in a line pattern. Then, the spray direction for each point gets determined with optimized spray angle, considered collision avoidance and robot reachability. Based on this raw data, the line movement will be smoothed to avoid uneven accelerations of the robot axis to produce a uniform coating result. Finally, the data gets postprocessed and a robot specific, ready to run movement program will be generated. This offline programming process is well tested on many different parts and industries and fits best when you have either a complex geometry or many similar parts, which must be coated individually.
