Off-line programming technology is frequently used in advanced robot assisted thermal spraying process, such as ABB RobotStudio, which offers excellent functions to simulate the real working environment of robot in order to test the robot trajectory. It also provides the add-in programs to make the simulation easier. ANSYS is an engineering simulation software which offers the function of modeling analysis with grids. The mesh on the surface of workpiece represents a layer with good coverage that can be the reference to create robot trajectory on it. This study provides a new ideal to combine those two technologies (or software) in order to realize the auto-generation of the robot trajectory for thermal spraying. Based on the function of the add-in program, we can transfer the data between RobotStudio and ANSYS using C# programming and then create the trajectory according to the operation parameters. Some experiments have shown that this method can effectively reduce the time required for robot programming.

Thermal Spray Toolkit is a developing toolkit for thermal spray applications based on RobotStudio™ software which is developed by Asea Brown Bovrie Ltd (ABB). This toolkit is composed of several functional modules including PathKit, ProfileKit and MonitorKit. PathKit provides numerous methods to create trajectory on different surfaces including square and rectangular surfaces, round surfaces, curved surfaces and rotating workpieces. ProfileKit permits coating surface analysis by importing a surface profile and it can also guide users to select the right spray parameters according to specific materials. MonitorKit can capture the robot displacement in real-time during the spray process. Thermal Spray Toolkit is a toolkit developed to apply robotics in thermal spray applications whose reliability has been confirmed by the experimental results.

The quality of thermal spray coatings depends not only on the spray parameters but also on the gun trajectory. When using a robot, trajectory generation represents an important part of the work. Different workpieces require different spraying trajectories and even a same workpiece will require different spraying trajectories versus different spraying techniques. The purpose of this study was to develop a software toolkit to auto generate the spraying trajectory. Thermal Spray Toolkit is an add-in software of Robot Studio® which is a simulation and off-line programming software of ABB Company. This toolkit provides several projects of trajectory generation: spraying on a quadrilateral piece; spraying on a circular piece; spraying on a curved surface; etc. Furthermore, all the parameters of the trajectory are adjustable, such as traverse step; distance of overstep; etc. The results show that this development is reliable and applicable.