In the automotive manufacturing sector, grinding, polishing, and deburring are critical post-process steps to ensure component precision, surface quality, and safety. However, traditional manual grinding has long faced severe challenges such as hazardous dust exposure, inconsistent quality, low efficiency, and recruitment difficulties.

Addressing these industry pain points, ESTUN has introduced a high-precision, high-sensitivity force-controlled intelligent robotic grinding solution. Through force control and other technologies, the robot can not only achieve precise positioning during operation but also sense and adaptively adjust the grinding force in real time, replacing the unstable force application of traditional manual or simple mechanical methods with constant, accurate "skillful force." Currently, this solution has been deployed in batch applications for grinding various core automotive components, effectively improving process quality and production efficiency.

Precision Grinding and Polishing of Automotive Exterior Trim Strips

Process Challenges

• High demand for material processing stability: The workpiece is made of easily deformable aluminum alloy trim, posing challenges for process stability and force control accuracy.

• Stringent precision and appearance standards: Requires flat grinding at the ends and high-gloss polishing, along with extremely tight tolerance requirements for the contour shape of the workpiece.

Solution
To address the above challenges, this solution employs a high-precision force-controlled robotic workcell with the following core configuration:

• Robot Body: ER70-2100-LI

• Core Control System: 100N high-precision force control system, ensuring stable and smooth force output

• Execution and Auxiliary Units: Pneumatic polisher, 15-position hybrid tool changer, positioner

• Process Software: Dedicated polishing process software package for integrated management of process parameters

Solution Value

• Achieves ultra-precision force control, ensuring quality and yield: The high-precision force control system maintains grinding force accuracy within ±1N, eliminating over-grinding or under-grinding issues on complex curved surfaces and improving overall polishing surface consistency by 20%.

• Delivers exceptional surface finish: Uses a dedicated servo motor to precisely control polishing torque within 1N, ensuring material removal remains stable at the micron level (0.1mm), ultimately achieving a flawless mirror finish under lamp inspection.

• Enhances process intelligence and usability: Built-in polishing wheel wear automatic compensation algorithm enables real-time, precise compensation for wear, reducing manual intervention and adjustments by approximately 30% and lowering reliance on operator experience.

Robotic Grinding of Automotive Battery Steel Trays

Process Challenges

• High material hardness increases grinding difficulty: The high hardness of high-carbon steel leads to insufficient cutting force in conventional processes and accelerated wear of grinding tools/cutters, posing serious challenges to grinding efficiency and cost control.

• Complex morphology and high consistency requirements: The workpiece features complex morphologies such as weld seam height differences and uneven steps, while the process requires flat grinding on both sides and corners, demanding extremely high trajectory precision and force control stability.

Solution
To tackle the dual challenges of high-hardness materials and complex morphology, this solution constructs a high-rigidity force-controlled intelligent robotic grinding workcell with the following core configuration:

• Execution Unit: ER70-2100-LI robot, high-torque electric spindle

• Perception and Control Core: 300N high-precision force control system, laser vision system

• Process Software and System: Dedicated grinding process software package, ESTUN precision servo system

Solution Value

• Meets high-precision grinding requirements: Through synergy between the force control system and process software, intelligently adjusts grinding trajectory, pressure, and speed. Combined with laser vision for automatic recognition and adaptive compensation of weld seam and step errors, achieves high-consistency processing with flatness <0.5mm.

• Achieves intelligent weld seam tracking: Addresses the challenge of varying weld seam positions on thin plates by using an autonomous laser vision system to accurately identify weld seams and adaptively adjust the robot trajectory in real time, ensuring the grinding path consistently aligns with the weld seam center and height for efficient, precise weld removal.

• Builds a fully automated production line: Integrates ESTUN loading/unloading and grinding robots with precision servo systems to achieve fully unmanned production from material placement, grinding, to collection, significantly improving system stability and production efficiency.

Grinding of Automotive Cooling Plates

Process Challenges

• High surface smoothness requirements: Ensures the battery installation area of the cooling plate is ground smooth to meet subsequent film application process requirements.

• Difficulty in controlling grind marks: During grinding, addressing grind mark issues to ensure uniform surface texture consistency is a key challenge.

Solution
To meet the core requirements of high smoothness and texture consistency, this solution employs a high-precision force-controlled polishing workcell with the following core configuration:

• Execution and Force Control Unit: ER70-2100-LI robot, 100N high-precision force control system, pneumatic grinder

• Motion and Process Core: Positioner servo and drive, dedicated process software package

Solution Value

• Achieves high flatness and smoothness: Through the synergy of high-trajectory-precision robots, high-precision force control systems, and dedicated process abrasive formulations, ensures precise control of trajectory and force, achieving high-standard flatness and smoothness.

• Ensures 100% uniform texture: Through deep integration of robot trajectory and process, achieves 100% consistent surface texture, significantly improving product yield.

Automotive Door Weld Seam Grinding

Process Challenges

• Flatness control challenges: Car doors are ultra-thin plates with varying weld seam heights, thicknesses, and significant joint height differences. After grinding, overall flatness must be ensured to be less than 0.5mm.

• Corner anti-grind-through challenges: The weld seams at the R-angle joints of ultra-thin plates are small. While ensuring flat grinding, smooth transitions must be achieved to avoid grind-through caused by the abrasive shifting from line contact to point contact, placing extremely high demands on robot precision and force control accuracy.

Solution
To meet the ultra-high precision and anti-damage requirements for ultra-thin plate grinding, this solution adopts a high-precision, low-speed anti-grind-through grinding solution with the following core configuration:

• Execution and Force Control Unit: ER50B-2100 robot, 300N high-precision force control system

• Process Core Unit: Grinding-dedicated high-torque electric spindle, dedicated process software package

Solution Value

• Achieves high-precision, smooth grinding: Through integrated control of high-precision robots and high-precision force control, combined with process software packages and formulations, enables variable-speed, variable-force trajectory control, effectively ensuring post-grinding flatness of less than 0.5mm.

• Overcomes R-corner anti-grind-through challenges: Uses ESTUN’s high-precision, low-speed mode combined with process software formulations to ensure smooth transitions in R-corner areas during grinding, avoiding grind-through risks caused by changes in abrasive contact methods.

Robotic Deburring of Automotive Turbocharger Housings

Process Challenges

• Complex process prone to secondary burrs: After machining, turbocharger housings require deburring, chamfering, and smoothing on complex, multi-curved surfaces. Due to the variety of process combinations, traditional machining methods are highly prone to generating secondary burrs.

• Difficulty in removing burrs from small-radius areas: The turbocharger housing includes numerous small-radius arcs and line segments, made of cast steel with exceptionally hard burrs. Effectively removing burrs while preserving the integrity of small-radius contours is a technical challenge.

Solution
To address the high-precision, batch deburring needs of turbocharger housing interiors, this solution employs a multi-spindle collaborative dedicated workcell with the following core configuration:

• Execution Unit: ER20-1200-MI robot

• Dedicated Processing Module: 3 force-controlled pneumatic floating spindles, rotary module

• Process Software Package: Dedicated deburring process software package

Solution Value

• Achieves high-precision deburring of small-radius areas: Leverages the robot’s excellent rigidity and trajectory control precision, combined with dedicated deburring tools and the adaptability of floating spindles, to achieve precise, consistent deburring of multiple complex small-radius contours on turbocharger housings.

• Significantly reduces reliance on labor and costs: Simplifies workstation operation, enabling ordinary workers to perform tasks after short-term training, significantly reducing dependence on highly skilled workers and lowering related labor costs by approximately 50%.

Edge Grinding of Automotive Sunroof Glass

Process Challenges

• High-precision contour control: Automotive sunroof glass features a hollow design with uneven overflow of sealing adhesive around the edges. Ensuring complete adhesive removal while avoiding over-grinding damage to the glass substrate is critical.

• Precise curved surface programming: The product has a curved surface, requiring the polishing wheel to remain perpendicular to the product contour normal during polishing. Traditional manual programming methods are inefficient and labor-intensive.

Solution
To address the core challenges of contour precision and curved surface programming efficiency, this solution employs a high-precision curved surface adaptive polishing workcell with the following core configuration:

• Execution and Conveyance Unit: ER100-3000 robot, single-station belt sander, conveyor line, pneumatic suction cup

• Process Software Package: Dedicated process software package

Solution Value

• Achieves high contour consistency: Through high-precision robot trajectory control, ensures strict consistency of polishing paths, completely removing overflow adhesive while effectively protecting the glass substrate and ensuring high uniformity of product contours.

• Significantly improves programming efficiency: Using ESTUN’s offline process software, enables rapid programming of complex curved surface trajectories and automatic optimization of polishing postures, increasing programming efficiency several-fold.

As the automotive manufacturing industry moves toward full-scale intelligence and flexibility, the traditional "craftsmanship" of grinding and polishing is undergoing a profound transformation. Faced with increasingly stringent quality control requirements, complex and variable material processes, and rising overall costs, traditional automation solutions can no longer meet the industry's pursuit of ultimate consistency, adaptability, and efficiency. True "intelligent" grinding is no longer about mechanical repetition but requires robots to possess "intelligent tactile senses" for perception, judgment, and real-time response.

In line with this trend, ESTUN has precisely addressed industry pain points, offering a full-process solution integrating "perception-decision-execution," providing a new paradigm for quality upgrading in automotive manufacturing. From gleaming exterior trim strips to concealed structural weld seams, from precise battery trays to fragile window glass, ESTUN’s solutions demonstrate exceptional versatility and depth, laying a solid and reliable process foundation for the "new quality productive forces" of China’s automotive industry.