Engineering students get top marks for robot milling with Delcam’s PowerMILL Robot

Five students in mechanical engineering from Aalborg University’s Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering (AAU M-TECH) have received top marks for their BSc project.  The students developed a prototype of a robot-based milling solution, built on Delcam’s PowerMILL Robot programming system, for concrete company BC Industry from the nearby town of Løkken.

The specific goal was to develop an automated solution to mill mould tools for production of concrete windowsills at BC Industry.  PowerMILL Robot was used to generate toolpaths for an ABB robot fitted with a milling head.  The software was also used to simulate the robot’s movements to prove out the program.

Professor Ole Madsen and Assistant Professor Simon Bøgh from AAU M-TECH were the supervisors of the project.  Professor Madsen stated that the top marks were given principally because the students had managed to develop from scratch a solution that was almost industry-ready.

"The students had no prior experience with robots or with CAM software for milling with robots.  Even so, they managed to develop a solution that could work in practice,” explained Professor Madsen.  "It was a complex project and I was impressed with the way they managed to understand the technologies so quickly.  This project has made us more interested in future research into robot-based milling solutions.”

One of the major advantages of machining with robots for tasks such as making moulds for concrete is that is much cheaper than having to invest in a complex and expensive machining centre.  In addition, a solution would only be possible with a fairly sophisticated machining centre, while the flexibility in the movement of the robot makes it able to handle very complex geometric shapes at a relatively low cost.

"It has been an exciting project that has proved to us that it is possible to make moulds using robots provided that they are combined with appropriate CAM software.  Although the moulds from the project were not completely ready for production, I believe that, in the long term, it will be possible to gain great benefits from adopting this approach,” predicted BC Industry CEO, Søren Jørgensen.

Rasmus Larsen was one of the students who participated in the project.  He explained that the CAM software had been easy to use, saying "It is hard to find any software that can generate the control program for a robot based on a CAD model and then simulate the machining.  However, that was the case with PowerMILL Robot and we found that the software worked well.”

His fellow student SørenValentin-Pedersen was also very satisfied with the CAM software.
"Unfortunately, we did not have the opportunity to work with the software for as long as we would have liked,” he said.  "However, we had enough time to discover that PowerMILL Robot contained a number of really cool features and that it was easy to use.  We did not find any other commercial software that could do the same things.”

Søren Friis, CEO of Delcam Denmark, supported the students during the project and was pleased with results of the cooperation with Aalborg University.  "I see great potential in this kind of machining solution,” he commented.  "Through their project, the students have proved that it is quite possible to manufacture larger moulds using a robot.”