Force Controlled Grinding-The Cutting Edge

Abstract: Sharpening knives by hand is both time-consuming and exhausting, and may still not always yield perfect results. This thesis investigates the possibility of sharpening knives with the use of a force-controlled industrial robot, regardless of the knifes shape. The procedure is performed by first identifying the shape of the knife, using Matlab Simulink to simulate the identifiation; two different types of force control are evaluated. Using an ABB IRB140B robot, the best performing controller is then used to identify a real knife. Based on the shape recorded by the robot, grinding experiments were successfully performed.