In the process of cutting or piercing for composite materials, waterjet cutting is a useful method especially in the automotive industry. In the progress of robot industry, robot programming is one of important issues to the robot manufacturers who are required to provide off-line programming(OLP) tool. Most of these companies have responded with an appropriate programming system. It is difficult to program the robots because most robot manufacturers have their own robot language and comunication schemes.
In this study, an PC level waterjet cutting off-line programming system(WJC-OLPS) is developed, which uses 3-dimentional CAD data and allows an operator to more readily program and evaluate robot tasks. This system contains a graphic simulator to simulate robot motion and cutting cycle time in a work invironment. It also provides operator the ability to monitor several cutting status remote from the robot work chamber.
An exemple workpice is modelled using the CATIA CAD system and the cutting nozzle path point data is then transferred to the system. The robot programming and simulation are performed using the data. The advantage of this method is that if it becomes necessary to modify the program this can be performed graphically in the system while the robot is still operating. Therefore, production need only be stopped which the new program is loaded on to the robot controller.
