A study of plasma gun orientation control accuracy for the thermal spraying robot

This paper is described the experimental results, on the simple method for measure the accuracy of plasma gun autonomous control system with plural laser range sensors for thermal spraying robot. In this robot, plasma gun position and orientation under spraying condition are measured with two laser range finders. Laser wavelength is about 600 nm, visible. Measured data are fed to microcomputer system in order to generate the control signal for the robot movement. The plasma gun installed on thermal spraying robot is maintained preset distance and perpendicularity within preset angle to the work piece surface and kept constant feed rate during thermal splaying operation. The processing feed rate on the surface has influence important for the quality of the processed surface. This simple measuring method is very useful for thermal splaying process.