Abstract
Most of shoes manufacturing processes are not yet automated, which puts restrictions on the increase of productivity. Among them, adhesive application processes particularly are holding the most workers and working hours. In addition, its working conditions are very poor due to the toxicity of adhesive agents. In case of automating adhesive application processes by using robots, the robot teaching by playback is difficult to produce high productivity because the kinds of shoes to be taught mount up to several thousands. Therefore, it is essential to generate the robot working paths automatically according to the kind, the size, and the right and left of shoes, and also to teach them to the robot automatically. This study deals with automated adhesive spraying to shoe outsoles and uppers by using a robot, and develops the program to generate three-dimensional robot working paths off-line based on CAD data. First, the three-dimensional data of an outsole outline or an upper profiling line are extracted from the two-dimensional CAD drawing file or the three-dimensional scanner. Next, based on the extracted data and the nozzle conditions for adhesive spraying, a robot working path is generated automatically. This research work is the core in automating adhesive spraying processes, and will do much for increasing productivity of shoes manufacturing.
