An Open Architecture Robotic Plasma Spray Forming System Based on Ethernet

A robotic plasma spray forming system based on industrial Ethernet is presented.Communications between PC and Motoman UP-20 robot are set up with Ethernet,and the specific robot control software is developed,whose main functions include the host control by PC and the exchange of working jobs,etc.The control center of all plasma spray equipment,Siemens S7-300 PLC,is connected to PC by MPI(Multi-Point Interface).Finally,the open architecture robotic plasma spray forming system is realized,which uses PC as its kernel and integrates process monitoring of spray forming,adaptive adjustment of robot spray trajectories,real time monitoring of robot and other sub-functions.Moreover,the SprayMonitor software for process monitoring is developed.Experimental results show that the intelligent adaptive adjustment of robot spray trajectories and the self-dispatch of manufacturing strategies are realized by the resultant system according to such online measurement results as temperature and thickness of the sprayed coatings.Flexibility of the forming system is promoted by integrating plasma spray forming with robot motion control.