Optimal planning in robotized cladding processes on generic surfaces

Cladding through laser metal deposition is a promising application of additive manufacturing. On the one hand, industrial robots are increasingly used in cladding because they provide wide wrist reorientation, which enables manufacturing of complex geometries. On the other hand, limitations in robot dynamics may prevent cladding of sharp edges and large objects. To overcome these issues, this paper aims at exploiting the residual degrees of freedom granted by the cladding process for the optimization of the deposition orientation. The proposed method optimizes the robot head orientation along a predefined path while coping with kino-dynamic constraints as well as process constraints. Experimental tests and results are reported and used to validate the approach.