Thermal Spray Toolkit (TST) is an extended program (Add-in) of RobotStudio which is off-line programming software of ABB Company. The Thermal Spay Toolkit can generate the robot trajectories rapidly, accurately and automatically for most... more
Thermal Spray Toolkit (TST) is an extended program (Add-in) of RobotStudio which is off-line programming software of ABB Company. The Thermal Spay Toolkit can generate the robot trajectories rapidly, accurately and automatically for most workpieces with a simple and regular form. In recent years, the growing demand for spraying workpiece of various shapes provides a strong motivation to develop new functions to Thermal Spray Toolkit. This paper describes the development of thermal spray toolkit and presents new functions: robotic trajectory auto-generation for complicated surfaces and the optimization of trajectory. Furthermore, many simulations are implemented to optimize trajectory in RobotStudio. Compared to the former thermal spraying without applying this toolkit, the coating quality is improved greatly. These results demonstrate that the new functions are reliable and efficient.
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The primary aim of this work is to develop an emulator to accurately simulate the dynamic behavior of a plasma torch. To that end, a nonlinear autoregressive model with exogenous inputs was designed around a mono-cathode torch used for... more
The primary aim of this work is to develop an emulator to accurately simulate the dynamic behavior of a plasma torch. To that end, a nonlinear autoregressive model with exogenous inputs was designed around a mono-cathode torch used for atmospheric plasma spraying. Operating parameters such as current and gas flow rate were used as input variables and in-flight particle characteristics were used as output variables. In order to compensate for unstable and random process phenomena, data smoothing is used to decrease signal noise and improve data relevance. This is a key step as it allows most of the in-flight particle properties to be processed. Prior to implementation in the emulator, the smoothed data are optimized to get the best possible match with actual measured values. With the refined data, the difference between simulated and measured particle temperature and velocity is less than 3%.
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The quality of thermal spray coatings depends not only on the spray parameters but also on the gun trajectory. When using a robot, trajectory generation represents an important part of the work. Different workpieces require different... more
The quality of thermal spray coatings depends not only on the spray parameters but also on the gun trajectory. When using a robot, trajectory generation represents an important part of the work. Different workpieces require different spraying trajectories and even a same workpiece will require different spraying trajectories versus different spraying techniques. The purpose of this study was to develop a software toolkit to auto generate the spraying trajectory. Thermal Spray Toolkit is an add-in software of Robot Studio® which is a simulation and off-line programming software of ABB Company. This toolkit provides several projects of trajectory generation: spraying on a quadrilateral piece; spraying on a circular piece; spraying on a curved surface; etc. Furthermore, all the parameters of the trajectory are adjustable, such as traverse step; distance of overstep; etc. The results show that this development is reliable and applicable.
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Being the 7th most abundant element on the earth, magnesium and its alloys have become very promising in numerous industrial applications because of some of their distinguished properties, including high thermal conductivity, high... more
Being the 7th most abundant element on the earth, magnesium and its alloys have become very promising in numerous industrial applications because of some of their distinguished properties, including high thermal conductivity, high strength/weight ratio, good machinability etc. However, some inferior properties especially the poor wear and corrosion resistance have obstructed a widespread use. As one of the most effective solutions, thermal spraying can deposit an adequate protective coating on the substrate, but the necessary grit-blasting operation before spraying leads to high grit-residues on the magnesium surface therefore degrading the deposit performance. The PROTAL® process, combining a laser surface preparation with the deposition stage, can avoid this kind of disadvantage. This paper presents the possibility of employing PROTAL® to prepare a resistant Ni-Cr coating on a magnesium substrate. The coating adhesion and interface microstructure were especially investigated.
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Thermal Spray Toolkit is a developing toolkit for thermal spray applications based on RobotStudio™ software which is developed by Asea Brown Bovrie Ltd (ABB). This toolkit is composed of several functional modules including PathKit,... more
Thermal Spray Toolkit is a developing toolkit for thermal spray applications based on RobotStudio™ software which is developed by Asea Brown Bovrie Ltd (ABB). This toolkit is composed of several functional modules including PathKit, ProfileKit and MonitorKit. PathKit provides numerous methods to create trajectory on different surfaces including square and rectangular surfaces, round surfaces, curved surfaces and rotating workpieces. ProfileKit permits coating surface analysis by importing a surface profile and it can also guide users to select the right spray parameters according to specific materials. MonitorKit can capture the robot displacement in real-time during the spray process. Thermal Spray Toolkit is a toolkit developed to apply robotics in thermal spray applications whose reliability has been confirmed by the experimental results.
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Nowadays, the application of industrial robots in the field of thermal spray becomes gradually important. A desired coating quality depends on the factors such as a balanced robot performance, a uniform scanning trajectory and stable... more
Nowadays, the application of industrial robots in the field of thermal spray becomes gradually important. A desired coating quality depends on the factors such as a balanced robot performance, a uniform scanning trajectory and stable parameters (e.g. scanning step, spray angle, relative speed). Meanwhile, all these factors will affect the coating formation and the mass and heat transfer. As a result, the kinematic optimization from all these aspects is the key factor for thermal spray applications. In this study, the robot performance will be optimized from the aspect of torch installation on the robot. Robot kinematic parameters will be obtained from off-line programming software and analyzed by statistics method. The results showed that this method can optimize the robot performance from the view of robotic kinematics. It can also assign the amount of motion reasonably to each axis of the robot during the process, to achieve the constant relative scanning speed.
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In thermal spray processes, the characteristics of in-flight particles (velocity and temperature) have a significant effect on coating performance. Although many imaging systems and algorithms have been developed for identifying and... more
In thermal spray processes, the characteristics of in-flight particles (velocity and temperature) have a significant effect on coating performance. Although many imaging systems and algorithms have been developed for identifying and tracking in-flight particles, most are limited in terms of accuracy. One key to solving the tracking problem is to get an algorithm that can distinguish different particles in each image frame. As the study showed, when noise and interference are treated, particles are more readily identified in the background, leading to more accurate size and position measurements with respect to time. This approach is demonstrated and the results discussed.
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Off-line programming software is widely used to simulate the robot-assisted work environment. RobotStudio, a product of ABB, offers off-line programming technology for industrial robot applications. Several software products that extend... more
Off-line programming software is widely used to simulate the robot-assisted work environment. RobotStudio, a product of ABB, offers off-line programming technology for industrial robot applications. Several software products that extend RobotStudio capabilities have been developed to meet special purposes. One such product is the Thermal Spray Toolkit. With the help of TST, RobotStudio can load the mesh information generated by ANSYS analysis software and then create the trajectory of robot spray operations with it. A method of arranging the index of grid nodes generated by ANSYS software is described in this article. The results show that TST can be successfully used to create a smooth robot trajectory, which corresponds to the requirements of industrial applications.
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The Journal of Thermal Spray Technology could not exist without the ongoing contributions of guest editors and reviewers, which ensure the highest quality of our journal. Manuscripts are reviewed for technical excellence, quality, and... more
The Journal of Thermal Spray Technology could not exist without the ongoing contributions of guest editors and reviewers, which ensure the highest quality of our journal. Manuscripts are reviewed for technical excellence, quality, and relevance by competent reviewers. The editors identify and select reviewers based on their demonstrable and recognized research expertise, professional experience, critical judgment and foresight, and forward thinking in their field of expertise. We express our deepest appreciation to these guest editors who have created special topical issues of JTST published in 2012, and to these reviewers, all of whom have completed manuscript reviews during 2012. Thank you all for giving generously of your valuable time and expertise.
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ABSTRACT Nowadays, robot manipulators have already been widely used in thermal spraying. They can be programmed in two ways: online and offline programming. The first programming method is easy to operate but difficult to guarantee the... more
ABSTRACT Nowadays, robot manipulators have already been widely used in thermal spraying. They can be programmed in two ways: online and offline programming. The first programming method is easy to operate but difficult to guarantee the quality of coatings, especially for some complex workpieces. The offline programming technology is a good solution that can overcome the online programming tolerances by using the CAD files of the workpiece.The purpose of this study is to introduce the current applications of offline programming technology in thermal spraying, including some popular methods of path generation, process simulation, robot kinematics optimization, etc. In the last part of this paper, two examples of offline programming in thermal spraying were presented which refer to the trajectory optimization on a workpiece with a great angle and path generation on the complex workpiece with external axis. The simulations and experiments have proved that offline programming can effectively improve the production efficiency and coating quality.
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Currently, industrial robots are widely used in the process of thermal spraying because of their high efficiency, security, and repeatability. Although robots are found suitable for use in industrial productions, they have some natural... more
Currently, industrial robots are widely used in the process of thermal spraying because of their high efficiency, security, and repeatability. Although robots are found suitable for use in industrial productions, they have some natural disadvantages because of their six-axis mechanical linkages. When a robot performs a series of stages of production, it could be hard to move from one to another because a few axes reach their limit value. For this reason, an external axis should be added to the robot system to extend the reachable space of the robots. This article concerns the application of external axis on ABB robots in thermal spraying and the different methods of off-line programming with external axis in the virtual environment. The developed software toolkit was applied to coat real workpiece with a complex geometry in atmospheric plasma spraying).
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ABSTRACT Offline robot trajectory generation is now often used for thermal spray applications, especially for complex design parts, requiring enhanced trajectories. This technique allows decreasing the downtime of the thermal spray cell... more
ABSTRACT Offline robot trajectory generation is now often used for thermal spray applications, especially for complex design parts, requiring enhanced trajectories. This technique allows decreasing the downtime of the thermal spray cell and insures the generation of optimized trajectories. Heat transfers caused by thermal spray increase the workpiece temperature during the coating application. This temperature acts directly on the resulting thermal stresses after cooling of the part down to the ambient temperature. In this study, a coupling was developed between the robot trajectory and computation of the thermal history of the workpiece during the spray operation. The method is based on the storage of the real robot trajectory (i.e., accurate in time) in a text file, and reading of this file with a C programming performed with ANSYS/FLUENT commercial code which allows computing the displacement of the thermal sources according to the trajectory and solving the transient heat conservation equation during the torch displacement. The contributions of the impinging plasma jet and the molten particle jet are taken into account in the model.
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ABSTRACT In the process of cold spray applications, robot kinematic parameters represent significant influences on the coating quality. Those parameters include: spray distance, spray angle, gun relative velocity to substrate, scanning... more
ABSTRACT In the process of cold spray applications, robot kinematic parameters represent significant influences on the coating quality. Those parameters include: spray distance, spray angle, gun relative velocity to substrate, scanning step, and cycle numbers. The combined effects which are caused by their interactions determine the coating thickness. The increasing requirements of coating productivity lead to the objectivity of analyzing the effect of robot kinematic parameters. So it becomes necessary to optimize the robot trajectory for spraying process in order to obtain a desired coating thickness. This study aims at investigating the relationship between the coating profile and the spray distance, scanning step, and introducing the basic principle of a software toolkit named thermal spray toolkit (TST) developed in our laboratory to generate the optimized robot trajectories in spray processes including thermal spray and cold spray. Experiments have been carried out to check the reliability of the simulated coating profile and the calculated coating thickness by TST.
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The purpose of this study is to introduce the current applications of off-line programming technology in thermal spraying, including some popular methods of path generation, procedure simulation, robot kinematics optimization, etc. Indeed... more
The purpose of this study is to introduce the current applications of off-line programming technology in thermal spraying, including some popular methods of path generation, procedure simulation, robot kinematics optimization, etc. Indeed this technology reduces the difficulty of robot programming and enormously improves its facility for thermal spraying. At the last part of this paper, presented two examples of off-line programming in thermal spraying which refer to trajectory optimization on a work piece with a great angle and path generation on the complex work piece. The simulations and experiments have proved that off-line programming can effectively improve the production efficiency and the quality of coating.
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PurposeThis paper presents the application of grey modeling for thermal spray processing parameter analysis in less data environment.Design/methodology/approachBased on processing knowledge, key processing parameters of thermal spray... more
PurposeThis paper presents the application of grey modeling for thermal spray processing parameter analysis in less data environment.Design/methodology/approachBased on processing knowledge, key processing parameters of thermal spray process are analyzed and preselected. Then, linear and non-linear grey modeling models are integrated to mine the relationships between different processing parameters.FindingsModel A reveals the linear correlation between the HVOF process parameters and the characterization of particle in-flight with average relative errors of 9.230 percent and 5.483 percent for velocity and temperature.Research limitations/implicationsThe prediction accuracies of coatings properties vary, which means that there exists more complex non-linear relationship between the identified input parameters and coating results, or more unexpected factors (e.g. factors from material side) should be further investigated.Practical implicationsAccording to the modeling case in this pap...
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Abstract The residual stress and distortion caused by non-uniform temperature distribution has limited the application of cold spray (CS) technique as an effective additive manufacturing and damage repair method for large-scale... more
Abstract The residual stress and distortion caused by non-uniform temperature distribution has limited the application of cold spray (CS) technique as an effective additive manufacturing and damage repair method for large-scale components. In order to investigate the influence of heat accumulation on coating quality, two types of CS Ni coatings with different building dimensions were deposited onto substrates. The type II Ni coatings with smaller fabrication size possess a fully dense microstructure without cracks, while the type I coatings with larger size show a significantly higher porosity value. The type II coatings show relatively higher microhardness. The tribological tests show that the type II Ni coatings present a better wear resistance with lower coefficient of friction and lower wear rate. The distinct worn morphologies show that the lower microhardness and porous microstructure of type I coatings lead to numerous delamination and exposure of interior coating. According to the temperature history recorded by infrared imaging camera, higher average temperature was found at the type II coatings due to enhanced heat accumulation of coating/substrate system at the short nozzle movement. The increased particle plastic deformation can further promote the coating densification rate and further ameliorate the coating quality. It can be summarized that the nozzle trajectory and deposition strategy can affect the temperature distribution and determine the coating qualities. This work provides a potential guidance for the optimization of coating quality by cold spraying additive manufacturing.
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Cette etude s’inscrit dans le cadre de l’amelioration et de la maitrise de l’utilisation d’un robot appliquee a la projection thermique sur des formes de geometrie complexe. Differentes voies ont ete etudiees pour mener a bien ce projet.... more
Cette etude s’inscrit dans le cadre de l’amelioration et de la maitrise de l’utilisation d’un robot appliquee a la projection thermique sur des formes de geometrie complexe. Differentes voies ont ete etudiees pour mener a bien ce projet. Sur la base d’une structure logicielle denommee (RobotStudio™), une trousse a outil dediee a la projection thermique dite « Thermal Spray Toolkit » a ete developpee. Cette trousse a outil comporte trois modules (« PathKit », « MonitorKit », « ProfileKit ») qui fournissent respectivement les creations de la trajectoire robot, le controle du robot en ligne et l’analyse du profil du depot dans un environnement de projection thermique. Dans un premier temps, les principes de l’extension logicielle pour RobotStudio™ ont ete etudies et la structure globale du programme d’extension a ete etablie. Puis, des methodes et protocoles de communication ont ete analyses et testes pour la connexion avec le robot. Plusieurs experimentations ont ete effectuees pour tester les fonctionnalites et la stabilite du logiciel developpe. Les resultats presentes montrent que ce developpement est bien adapte a la generation et l’optimisation de trajectoires robot hors-ligne pour la projection thermique.
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Robot trajectory generation on free-form work pieces for thermal spray using Zhen-Hua Caia, Si-Hao Denga, Han-Lin Liaoa, Chun-Nian Zengb, Christian Coddeta a LERMPS, Universit de Technologie de Belfort-Montbliard, 90010 Belfort, France b... more
Robot trajectory generation on free-form work pieces for thermal spray using Zhen-Hua Caia, Si-Hao Denga, Han-Lin Liaoa, Chun-Nian Zengb, Christian Coddeta a LERMPS, Universit de Technologie de Belfort-Montbliard, 90010 Belfort, France b Wuhan University of Technology, 430070 Wuhan, China Off-line programming software is widely used to simulate the robotic work environment nowadays. Such as Robotstudio™, it is a product of ABB which offers off-line programming technology for industrial robot. Many extended software products which based on Robotstudio™ are developed to meet special purposes. This study introduces extended software named thermal spray toolkit (TST) to adapt to thermal spray applications. With the help of TST, Robotstudio™ can read in the mesh information which generated by ANSYS, and then create the trajectory of robot with it. Method of arranging the index of grid nodes which generated by ANSYS is also introduced in this article. The results show that the robot traje...
An experience was carried out to obtain data for simulation•A system identification methodology was employed•Result showed an average error about 1% in temperature and 2% in velocity