Automation of the sanding process for wood products

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This is a proposal for a new collaboration between Queen's University (Prof. Brian Surgenor) and Stinson**Studios (Tamworth, Ontario). The objective is to automate the process of sanding a wooden bowl.**Stinson Studios is a woodworking business dating back to 1982. Their product is wooden bowls cut from tree**trunks and burls. One step in the production process involves the sanding the inner surface of a bowl with a**hand-held orbital sander. This is a physically demanding repetitive motion process. Each staff member is by**necessity limited to working for no more than 2 hours continuously. Over the years, two staff have developed**tendonitis in the elbow and the wrist, and have had to be reassigned. Current staff wear arm and wrist braces to**minimize the onset of tendonitis. Automating this step would provide for a safer and healthier workplace.**Production rates would also increase, possibly as high as a factor of five.**The specific aim of this proposal is to design a controller for a 6-axis serial robot to sand a bowl, and take the**place of the human operator. The process of sanding wood is similar to the polishing of metal, both set out to**eliminate scratches from the surface. There are expensive robot-based commercial systems available for the**polishing of aluminum, a common process in the aerospace industry. Thus, there is literature on the subject of**contour following and the polishing of metal. However, unlike aluminum, wood is a non-homogeneous and**more importantly, the geometry of each bowl is unique. Only one example could be found in the literature on**the subject of contour following and the sanding of wood. It is hypothesized that a hybrid controller with force**and position feedback could be used to: a) generate a tool path (with touch sensor as end effector) and b) sand**the inner bowl surface with generated tool path as guidance (with orbital sander as end effector). Taking a**vision guided robot approach is not feasible, due to the nature of the working environment.