Andrew needs to enlarge his shop again for THIS

[Robert Rickard]

I'm sure Andrew could make good use of this:

26478

[chiloquinruss]

Now that's what I call a 'tool'! :D However, I'm not to sure about cuttin' foam without a dust collector, does not look like anything I want to do! Check the other 'tool' in the background! Russ

http://www.talkshopbot.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=26479&stc=1

[coryatjohn]

I can just hear my wife when I ask her about getting that big toy. I could make room for it in my shop...

[Ajcoholic]

LoL Robert... if you have an extra half million I'd find the room for it :)

I've seen these robots at some of the shows (like in Atlanta) moving material to and from large CNC machining centers. Pretty impressive stuff and man, do they look heavy duty!

[Burkhardt]

Brings back memories....back in the mid 80's I used to work as a research engineer for a German university in the composites department. We had a similar robot donated from ABB (back then ASEA). That was a pretty exciting new thing back then and probably the ancestor of the machine in the picture (but same color). We used it to prove it could de-burr compression molded glass-polyester BMW motorcycle parts. Turned out, while sufficiently accurate, the rigidity of the robot was not that great and made the PCD deburring tool chatter quite often. But, at the end the biggest problem was the variation in the plastic parts. The tool path was created by teach-in (no good CAD/CAM systems back then) but all useless, when the target edge was at a different position.

So, I guess to present day, there are low-paid workers trimming the flash from such molded parts in a dusty fibrous environment. Just seeing them work made my skin itch.