To speed up robotic mold polishing by hard tools

Computer controlled mold surface finishing is important to a CIM system for mold making, and robotics is a promising technology for the computer controlled surface polishing. While potentially faster and more consistent than manual polishing, robotic polishing can still occupy significant part of the mold making time. With the support of experiments, this paper aims to demonstrate that a careful choice of polishing tool can save the polishing time by as much as three-fourth and also reduce the surface waviness dramatically.