Development and implementation of automatic scraping mechanism

Historically, scraping is the most significant manufacturing process in the industry of machine tool. Since this skill is hard to program into a machine, it will be lost. In this paper, a scraping mechanism with the performance that is same as hand scraping techniques was developed. An automatic scraping mechanism emulate manual scraping operation is presented in this research. Firstly, the manual scraping operations were investigated, and the design requirements based on scraper's experience and engineering knowledge were integrated into the conceptual design, evaluation, and feasibility study. Through the use of CAD/CAM system, the geometric models and the assembly of the components of a designed scrapping mechanism were constructed. The motion programming and kinematic simulation were carried out using the mechanism simulation software. A scraping mechanism with three degrees of freedom was identified and a prototype was fabricated. The scarping patterns were compared with the ones that were made manually. The scraped marks under various cutting conditions were obtained. The designed automatic scraping mechanism is helpful to the intelligent automation of the scraping work. ? 2012 American Scientific Publishers. All rights reserved.