Originally Posted by
PhoenixMetal
Hi MBX5, well while the robot may be capable of doing what you want, I don't think this is the best route to go. The power and versatility of machining centers comes very much from the software that is used to generate the toolpaths.
Great machining CAM software like MasterCam is the most important portion of the machine+control+software equation in my opinion. It is through this software that you look at your part (that you may have created in solidworks) and decide what pattern the cutter will take, and here you get to tweak myriad different settings and options that come together to make intelligent toolpaths that create your part.
I don't think that any of the popular CAM software packages have the capability to write code that a robot would follow.
So, trying to do machining with your robot, you will be working way harder than necessary, having to reinvent the wheel by figuring out how to program all the different toolpaths. At best, you would be able to come up with some really rudimentary toolpaths - perhaps equivalent to what people do who manually type out their G-code to run their machines. But you will not be able to pull off the highly sophisticated work that comes effortlessly from using a great CAM software package with a machining center.
Used machining centers are really, really cheap these days since there seems to be about two auctions every day from automotive-related plant closures. If it is important for you to add this capability, I'd recommend you just get a machining center. Trust me, there will be a tough enough learning cure with that alone - let alone trying to figure out how to program a robot to emulate one!