Towards wood dust collection during robotic grooving

The wood construction industry has integrated the challenges of robotics and introduced the use of five-axis machining for more than 30 years. However, the wood dust and chips are often contaminated with different chemicals which causes health risks. In this paper, we present an experimental analysis of the physical properties of chips by observing the motion behavior with a single high-speed camera. The experiments are led with an industrial gantry robot during the grooving process. The results show that we can estimate and quantify the velocity direction of wood chip emission in a range of 5m/s near the tool-material interaction. We also constructed two suction hoods and we experimentally show that chip collection is better when the tube is tilted near the tool.