Modeling and identification of an industrial robot for machining applications

Industrial robots represent a promising, cost-saving and flexible alternative for machining applications. Due to the kinematics of a vertical articulated robot the system behavior is quite different compared to a conventional machine tool. This article describes the modeling of the robot structure and the identification of its parameters with focus on the analysis of the system's stiffness and its behavior during the milling process. Therefore a method for the calculation of the Cartesian stiffness based on the polar stiffness and the use of the Jacobian matrix is introduced. Based on the results of the identification and the experimental validation the machining performance of the robot is evaluated and conclusions are drawn.