Removal, Polishing, Finishing, Deburring, Cutting Robots

Material Removal Robots

Yaskawa Motoman’s extensive product line of high-performance material removal robots includes a variety of application-specific and general-purpose models that are ideal for material removal, surface preparation and finishing operations, including grinding, finishing, polishing, sawing, degating, waterjet removal, etc.

  • Payloads from 6-35 kg
  • Variety of configurations available
  • High torsion and rigidity deliver industry-leading performance
  • Wide range of work envelopes
  • Floor-, wall- and ceiling-mounted models
  • Custom or standard end-of-arm tooling available

Fast, Flexible and Precise Material Removal

Cutting, Finishing, Deburring and more with Motoman Robots

Yaskawa Motoman offers manufacturers a wide range of robotic solutions for cutting and material removal applications. These robots have been used extensively in laser, plasma, waterjet and oxy-fuel cutting applications, as well as grinding, polishing and finishing.

Many robots are not designed for the rigors of grinding, polishing, buffing or other material removal tasks that use the robot to manipulate a material removal tool (wire brush, sand paper, knife) over the part surface or contours.  In addition to an extensive line of six-axis general-purpose robots, Yaskawa Motoman has a robust, application-specific DX1350 robot designed with the rigidity needed for material removal applications.  In order to ensure constant surface pressure on contoured products, an active force sensing device is often used to optimize the finish on the part and increase efficiency of using abrasive consumables by as much as 10 times!

Robotic material removal systems are often required to perform multiple tasks — cutting and deburring, sanding and polishing, etc.  Two approaches – multiple spindles or spindles that can change media or tools – can be used to perform the various tasks.  The method used is generally determined by the process.   Experienced Tobotic Automation application engineers will help you determine the best approach for your project.

Material Removal Processes

Cutting and Material Removal applications typically consist of multiple operations. While the operations vary with the application, we’ve listed several of the most common operations below.

Industrial Grinding with a Motoman RobotIndustrial Grinding

Grinding applications typically mean bringing parts to a grinder or sander and holding the parts precisely or moving along a specified path. We have a wide range of robots, including the HP250D-200, HP350D, HP500D and HP600D robots for larger parts. These robots have the payload capacity for handling large parts and are a parallel link design, which is very stiff for demanding high pressure grinding applications.

Motoman Finishing Robot sanding and buffing an industrial partFinishing & Polishing

For finishing and polishing applications, the parts are frequently smaller. For these applications, robots from our MH line are a good choice for the task.  These high performance, durable robots are ideal for these applications.  For part to process tasks with larger parts, the MH215 or MH250 are good choices.  For smaller parts or process to part applications, a MH50 or MH165 may be chosen.

Motoman robotic deburring machineDeburring

For gear deburring, we offer our PerfectEdge™ 2010.  This system is designed for precise deburring of gears up to 20” in diameter and 10” tall.  These are general guidelines that may differ depending on the specific gear configuration.  Other configurations are available to meet specific customer needs.

Motoman waterjet cutting robots

Waterjet Cutting

Robotics can improve accuracy and cycle times, particularly in waterjet cutting applications where improving the time handling the material is critical to achieving TAKT time.  See Case Study

Laser & Plasma Cutting

This robotic process requires a powerful high-speed robot with high-rigidity and precision drives. Common robotic uses include cutting small holes and sharp corners in metal.

Ultrasonic Cutting

The ultrasonic trimming head can easily cut carpet, headliners, instrument panels, door and other interior auto trim panels. Highly efficient and space saving, this application can replace waterjet cutting.

Trimming & Routing

Trimming and routing are ideal robot applications.  Because of the flexibility offered, a robot may be able to tend a machine in addition to the material removal processes.  With standard SPI and other flexible interfaces available, machine interfacing becomes easy, allowing quicker startup, debug and programming.

Sawing

Many people think of sawing as a material handling application.  In cases where the robot loads product into or out of a saw, it certainly has many of the same characteristics.  In recent years, we have seen an increase in applications where the robot is manipulating raw material as it is cut by the saw blade.  This creative application provides a highly flexible solution for cutting a wide range of materials.