Link-Touch × KUKA | Flexible Grinding for Complex Curved Surfaces Using Six-Axis Force/Torque Sensors

In product manufacturing, grinding and polishing is a critical process that determines surface texture and assembly yield. Complex curved surfaces and dense edge details make manual grinding heavily reliant on operator experience, resulting in low efficiency and unstable yields. Excessive grinding may cause perforation and scrap parts, while insufficient grinding leaves burrs unremoved, making uniform quality hard to guarantee.

While robotic grinding has replaced manual labor in certain scenarios to boost efficiency and safety, it has long been plagued by a core bottleneck: robots lack preciseforce sensing.

Traditional solutions adopt position control and lack a real-time closed-loop force feedback system. When the grinding tool touches the product housing, the robot cannot detect the magnitude and direction of contact force, which leads to uneven grinding pressure. When handling curved profiles, it fails to dynamically adjust grinding force and angle as skilled operators do, resulting in localized over-grinding and inconsistent polishing effects. This problem proves especially severe in the 3C electronics sector — consumer electronics come with extremely stringent appearance requirements; any surface defect may lead to full-batch scrapping and substantial financial losses for manufacturers.

Link-Touch Six-Axis Force/Torque Sensors Empower Precision Force-Controlled Grinding

To address the above industry pain points, high-precision six-axis force/torque sensors from Link-Touch deliver practical and effective solutions. The core logic is straightforward: mount a six-axis F/T sensor at the robot arm’s end effector, with the grinding tool attached to the front of the sensor. While grinding product housings, the sensor captures real-time 3D forces (Fx/Fy/Fz) and 3D torques (Mx/My/Mz), then transmits force signals back to the robot control system. The system dynamically adjusts grinding force and trajectory based on the force control model to form closed-loop control. This is genuine compliant grinding: the robot automatically modulates contact force according to the workpiece’s shape and material, instead of rigidly following a fixed motion path.

In practical operation, the system captures normal contact force and tangential grinding force in real time via the six-axis force/torque sensor to automatically compensate for workpiece dimensional errors and trajectory deviations. The sensor features a sampling frequency of over 10 kHz, enabling millisecond-level responses to curvature variations on housing curved surfaces. Taking the arc surface on the top of a mouse and the parting line edges of buttons as examples: the sensor detects fluctuations in grinding pressure continuously, and the robot actively adjusts the end-effector posture to keep the grinding force steadily within preset values. This eliminates perforation caused by over-grinding and burrs generated from under-grinding.

Notably, Link-Touch six-axis force/torque sensors deliver ultra-high accuracy of 0.1%FS together with robust overload resistance up to 500%. This combination is critical for grinding applications: the sensors can precisely detect tiny sub-newton pressure for delicate polishing, while withstanding impact shocks from rapid robot forward and retract movements. Furthermore, equipped with algorithm decoupling technology and temperature compensation design, the sensors feature extremely low crosstalk, guaranteeing accurate and stable measurement data even during long-hour continuous grinding operations.

Compatible with all types of robots with full communication protocol integration, plug-and-play ready

Link-Touch six-axis force/torque sensors are widely applied in 3C electronic grinding scenarios and quickly recognized by intelligent manufacturing enterprises, mainly due to the product’s excellent universal compatibility and easy integration.

• Full-brand compatibility & seamless integration:Link-Touch six-axis force/torque sensors adopt standardized mechanical interfaces and electrical specifications, enabling rapid integration with collaborative arms, industrial robots and heavy-duty automated equipment alike. On customer sites, Link-Touch collaborates with mainstream robot brands including Rokae, Dobot, Realman, UR, Han’s Yaskawa, KUKA and ABB to develop innovative applications of six-axis force control in grinding, assembly, drag-and-drop teaching and other processes. Such extensive cross-brand compatibility allows customers to retain their existing robot production lines. Force control upgrades can be implemented without replacing robot bodies, greatly lowering the capital barrier for automation retrofits.

• Full support for communication protocols for hassle-free integration:In industrial automation, robots from different manufacturers and generations usually adopt disparate communication protocols, which has long been a major pain point for system integrators. Link-Touch six-axis force/torque sensors fully support mainstream industrial fieldbus and serial communication protocols such as EtherCAT, CAN, RS422, RS485, Modbus and Ethernet, realizing comprehensive protocol compatibility. System integrators are spared from complicated protocol conversion and underlying driver development, significantly shortening project lead times while cutting integration risks and technical barriers.

• Plug-and-play for rapid deployment: Deployment of conventional force control solutions usually demands extensive underlying development work. Driver adaptation and control algorithm debugging alone often take weeks or even months. To tackle this pain point, Link-Touch takes the lead in the industry by providing matching force control software packages, delivering true plug-and-play, out-of-box performance.

• Plug-and-play for rapid deployment: Deployment of conventional force control solutions usually demands extensive underlying development work. Driver adaptation and control algorithm debugging alone often take weeks or even months. To tackle this pain point, Link-Touch takes the lead in the industry by providing matching force control software packages, delivering true plug-and-play, out-of-box performance.

Application Results & Market Recognition

Link-Touch six-axis force/torque sensors have achieved large-scale implementation across multiple industries including humanoid robots, collaborative robots, industrial robots, medical equipment, aerospace, 3C electronics, automotive, sanitary ware and heavy industry.

The company’s robust technical strength and superior product performance have earned high market recognition. According to the latest report from GGII (Gaogong Robot Industry Institute), Link-Touch captured a 72.6% market share in six-axis force/torque sensors for humanoid robots in 2025. On the production capacity front, Link-Touch has built a self-owned manufacturing base covering over 10,000 square meters in Guangdong. It now boasts an annual delivery capacity of 1 million sets of joint force sensors and 200,000 sets of end-effector six-axis force/torque sensors, delivering solid supply chain support for mass production of downstream products.

As requirements for surface precision keep rising in the 3C electronics manufacturing industry and robot penetration continues to grow across smart manufacturing, force-controlled grinding technology based on six-axis force/torque sensors is evolving from an optional upgrade into an essential necessity. Link-Touch will keep focusing deeply on force-sensing technology and iterate products toward higher precision, greater reliability and superior environmental adaptability. Leveraging its core strengths of full protocol compatibility, plug-and-play operation and universal robot brand adaptation, Link-Touch empowers more smart manufacturers and accelerates the transformation of China’s manufacturing sector toward flexibility and intelligence.