Setting up an industrial robot for automated overarm polishing

The overarm polishing process chain consists of polishing, cleaning and interferometric metrology of the workpiece. At the TC Teisnach Optics, we strive to automize this entire process chain using an industrial robot. The time proven conventional system requires a skilled operator adjusting the process parameters after each measurement in order to achieve the desired result. These process parameters depend on various conditions and are generally not intuitive. Therefore, a profound knowledge acquired within several years of experience is required. In order to automate the process- chain a robot based polishing cell has been set up, that realizes the conventional overarm polishing process chain. Subsequently this system will be enabled to adjust the process parameters to achieve proper processing of the surface. This can be achieved by an algorithm using a mathematic removal model. Thus, at TC Teisnach Optics we convert the overarm polishing process from manual and highly operator dependent to automated and reproducible. In this contribution we report on the first step towards the automated overarm polishing cell: The exact transfer from the conventional overarm polishing system to the robot cell. To realize this, we built a lens holder for the robot which has the same features as the holder in the conventional polishing machine. We took all adjustable polishing parameters as well as all polishing media on the conventional machine and transferred them to the robot system. Subsequently several tests were conducted using the same parameters first at the conventional machine then on the robot polishing system and the differences between the systems were investigated.