Partnership to Advance Robotic Machining Stability and Precision
ENCY Software, a European developer of innovative CAD/CAM/OLP solutions for automating CNC machine and industrial robot programming, and The Danish Advanced Manufacturing Research Center (DAMRC), a non-profit research organization dedicated to enhancing manufacturing productivity, have announced a new partnership. This collaboration aims to drive innovation in robotic machining and revolutionize the use of industrial robots for material removal applications.
While industrial robots offer significant advantages in working range and flexibility compared to traditional machine tools, they often struggle with pose-dependent instability. System stiffness and vibration behavior can change drastically depending on the robot’s configuration and position along a toolpath. To address this, DAMRC is utilizing ENCY as a core research and production tool to connect theoretical analysis with real-world manufacturing challenges.
Bridging the Gap Between Research and Industry
DAMRC, an applied research center based in Denmark, works to turn complex engineering concepts into practical methods for industrial companies. By using ENCY, the DAMRC research team can prepare and analyze robotic operations within a single environment, replacing the need for multiple disjointed software programs.
Key capabilities of ENCY utilized in the research include:
Singularity and Collision Analysis: Ensuring safe and predictable robot movement.
Axis Mapping: Transforming abstract tool movements into specific robot poses to evaluate system stiffness.
Dynamic Response Evaluation: Analyzing how a robot’s natural frequencies and stiffness change across the workspace.
Reducing Trial and Error
One significant milestone of the collaboration involved a study on the pose-dependent dynamics of six-axis robots. By leveraging ENCY’s digital twin environment, researchers were able to link experimental measurements directly to a real CAM process. This allows engineers to identify resonance zones and choose optimal spindle speeds and robot positions before the first cut is even made.
“ENCY serves as the foundational production environment in our chain of stability analysis,” the study notes. “It helps connect CAM, robot kinematics, and applied engineering analysis within one process, which is exactly what the market needs for industrial-scale deployment.”
Scaling for Industrial Deployment
For the manufacturing industry, the value of this research is clear: reduced setup time, lower risks of vibration or tool wear, and highly repeatable results. ENCY and DAMRC are committed to moving robotic machining from the realm of experimental demonstrations to a predictable, high-precision engineering discipline ready for the global factory floor.
For more information: www.encycam.com
