Milled Timber Joints using Kuka Prc

[ricocacciatore]

Hi all, I'm new to the forum and i'm wondering if one of you would be able to point me in the right direction.

I'm a 6th year mArch student from the welsh school of architecture, we have just invested in a KR 600 FORTEC and I would like to use rhino and the Kuka Prc to mill Unique joints in timber. I have looked through the tutorials and have been unable to find one that shows how to mill from a solid block of material. What is the best way to do this?

Thank you for your help in advance.

[Johannes @ Robots in Architecture]

Hello,

Great to hear that the Welsh School of Architecture got (or is getting?) a robot! Who is responsible for the robot from the faculty?
At the moment, we don't have the KR600 in our robot library, but we integrate new robot types for our members for free. Also with the free version you can define a custom robot, just make sure not to use too many polygons (the Rhino command ReduceMesh is very useful!).
Anyway, regarding your question on milling: We have done quite a few projects with milling and KUKA|prc (like e.g. a monumental sculpture at the Red Bull Formula 1 Racing Track, realized by two artists: http://www.robotsinarchitecture.org/931/recent-robot-news) and very recently actually a wood project where we milled 400 nodes (the video is not public yet, but send me an eMail to johannes robotsinarchitecture.org and I can privately forward it).
The issue is how to generate the toolpaths. As of now - to my knowledge - there is no proper Grasshopper milling-toolpath plugin available, so you can either define the toolpaths yourself using Grasshopper components, or get the data from elsewhere. As you want to do unique joints, the parametric GH-way is probably the way to go. The member version of KUKA|prc also contains a postprocessor for SprutCAM which allows you to create toolpaths in SprutCAM and turn the 5-axis G-Code into KUKA code within KUKA|prc. The postprocessor-approach also works for many other applications, at one point we did a Slic3r postprocessor for 3D printing.
If you can share a sketch of your design I can give you some more accurate feedback, my eMail is listed above.

Best,
Johannes @ Robots in Architecture