Grinding/Cutting Technology and Equipment of Multi-scale Casting Parts

Abstract Multi-scale casting parts are important components of high-end equipment used in the aerospace, automobile manufacturing, shipbuilding, and other industries. Residual features such as parting lines and pouring risers that inevitably appear during the casting process are random in size, morphology, and distribution. The traditional manual processing method has disadvantages such as low efficiency, high labor intensity, and harsh working environment. Existing machine tool and serial robot grinding/cutting equipment do not easily achieve high-quality and high-efficiency removal of residual features due to poor dexterity and low stiffness, respectively. To address these problems, a five-degree-of-freedom (5-DoF) hybrid grinding/cutting robot with high dexterity and high stiffness is proposed. Based on it, three types of grinding/cutting equipment combined with offline programming, master-slave control, and other technologies are developed to remove the residual features of small, medium, and large casting parts. Finally, the advantages of teleoperation processing and other solutions are elaborated, and the difficulties and challenges are discussed. This paper reviews the grinding/cutting technology and equipment of casting parts and provides a reference for the research on the processing of multi-scale casting parts.