Chatter prediction for parallel mirror milling of thin-walled parts by dual-robot collaborative machining system

Thin-walled parts with double-sided features are widely used in the aerospace industry, but the machining of such parts still faces great challenges due to their weak rigid structure and the positioning errors caused by turning/re-clamping of the workpiece. For this purpose, a novel machining approach for parallel mirror robotic milling of thin-walled parts is proposed. Different from conventional single-sided milling, it can simultaneously machine both sides of the workpiece while avoiding the above problems and improving machining efficiency. However, the introduction of multiple cutting excitations makes the vibration behavior of the workpiece more complicated, thus making it difficult for the dynamic modeling of the dual-robot machining system. This paper aims to uncover the dynamic mechanism of chatter phenomenon in parallel mirror robotic milling process in consideration of the interaction of tool-workpiece-tool system. A dual-robot collaborative machining system is first developed for the milling of thin-walled workpiece, and the method of synchronous motion planning for dual robots is described. The slave robot synchronously follows the master robot and the two milling cutters mounted on tool flange of the robot are kept in mirror position. Over a tooth passing period, the engagement state of the cutters and the workpiece is analyzed considering the effect of rotation phase lag (RPL) between the twin cutters. After that, the vibration state and the corresponding instantaneous displacement of the workpiece can be expressed explicitly, then the dynamic resultant cutting force acting on the workpiece is calculated according to the mechanistic force model. Comprehensively considering the dynamic interaction of the tool-workpiece-tool system, multi-mode and position-dependent modal characteristics of thin-walled part, a time-varying delay differential equation is constructed and solved to explore the dynamical behavior of parallel mirror milling process. The predicted stability lobe diagram is validated by a series of parallel mirror milling tests on thin-walled PMMA plates. Comparisons of numerical and experimental results show that the dynamic model successfully predicts the chatter stability for the parallel mirror milling of thin-walled parts.