CAD-based offline programming platform for welding applications using 6-DOF and 2-DOF robots

The main objective of this research is to design and develop an offline programming (OLP) simulation platform for welding applications. The proposed platform was developed using OPEN CASCADE libraries in C++ integration environment to perform a given task on a 6-DOF and 2-DOF robots. In this paper, the welding path is generated autonomously using the CAD features and all the calculations are done within the platform. The OLP simulation environment consists of loading CAD files, kinematics analysis, welding path-planning, welding parameters, motion planning, simulation, and robot execution file. In addition, the proposed platform is capable of generating a collision avoidance path before mapping to a real site.