Abstract: As the end-effector of robot, the induction hardening tool is required to keep its orientations perpendicular to the fillets or chamfers of the mould at a distance during its uniform motion along the hardening trajectory. This trajectory consists of a group of central curves which are parametric curves on the corresponding chamfers or fillets and between two edges of every chamfer or fillet. The trajectory points and the surface normal vectors at these points are obtained by parametric equations of the fillets or chamfers. This study is conducted to join each central curve into the entire hardening trajectory, including handling on the irregular surfaces and unifying the directions of hardening tool motion.According to kinematics of robot, the trajectory points in modeling coordinate system are transferred into the poses of the induction hardening tool in user frame of robot. The kinematical interference of the induction hardening tool and robot joints is checked by Roboguide simulation tool. The validity of the robotic off-line programming (OLP) system was verified by experiments.

Key words: Off-line programming (OLP), Induction hardening, Parametric surface, Coordinate transformation