Experimental study on vibration suppression for robotic milling using an MRE absorber

During the robotic milling process, vibration is one of the main factors that affect the machining accuracy and surface quality due to the low stiffness of the robot structure. Intelligent material, magneto-rheological elastomer (MRE), owns the features of adjustable stiffness, reversible and fast response, has been gradually used for vibration suppression. Therefore, to suppress the forced vibration for robotic milling, this paper used the principle of vibration absorption and combined it with MRE material to design a snubber. A series of excitation and milling experiments were carried out to evaluate its vibration attenuation characteristics. In the excitation experiment, sine signals with frequencies of 40 Hz, 42.02 Hz and 60 Hz with the same amplitude of 5 N were applied to the MRE absorber. In the milling experiment, the dominant frequencies under speeds of 800 RPM, 840 RPM and 1200 RPM were analyzed first. Then, the vibration mitigation characteristics of the MRE absorber during robotic milling of aluminum alloy were explored by adjusting the current. Experimental results showed that under the action of MRE absorber, the acceleration responses are suppressed effectively. In detail, after tuning the current, the amplitude and the root mean square of vibration acceleration in three directions of sinusoidal excitation could be suppressed by more than 19.23% and 7.35% correspondingly. The power spectral density value of the peak frequency could be reduced by more than 69.13%. In milling experiments, the MRE absorber also achieved certain vibration absorption effects. Furthermore, the surface roughness of the workpiece was also fallen by more than 16.51% which provides support for further engineering application in the field of robotic milling. Undoubtedly, the absorber needs further optimization to achieve better vibration suppression ability and a larger working bandwidth.