Robotic Metal Spinning

Metal spinning is a plastic forming process that forms a metal sheet or tube by forcing the metal onto a rotating mandrel using a roller tool. This is a study on metal spinning applying robot control techniques such as force feedback control with the aim to develop flexible and intelligent forming processes, and to expand a new application area for robot control. An experimental setup was developed for gathering basic data on the forming process. Some results of preliminary experiments are presented. The influence of the clearance between the roller and mandrel is also discussed. The author proposes applying hybrid position/force control for shear spinning, which is free from fine adjustment of the clearance. The effectiveness of the proposed method was experimentally verified.