  The six axis robots are widely used in automotive industry for their good
repeatability (as defined in the ISO92983) (painting, welding, mastic
deposition, handling etc.). In the aerospace industry, robot starts to be used
for complex applications such as drilling, riveting, fiber placement, NDT, etc.
Given the positioning performance of serial robots, precision applications
require usually external measurement device with complexes calibration
procedure in order to reach the precision needed. New applications in the
machining field of composite material (aerospace, naval, or wind turbine for
example) intend to use off line programming of serial robot without the use of
calibration or external measurement device. For those applications, the
position, orientation and path trajectory precision of the tool center point of
the robot are needed to generate the machining operation. This article presents
the different conditions that currently limit the development of robots in
robotic machining applications. We analyze the dynamical behavior of a robot
KUKA KR240-2 (located at the University of Bordeaux 1) equipped with a HSM
Spindle (42000 rpm, 18kW). This analysis is done in three stages. The first
step is determining the self-excited frequencies of the robot structure for
three different configurations of work. The second phase aims to analyze the
dynamical vibration of the structure as the spindle is activated without
cutting. The third stage consists of vibration analysis during a milling
operation.
