Abstract
The concept of measurement-enabled production is based on integrating metrology systems into production processes and generated significant interest in industry, due to its potential to increase process capability and accuracy, which in turn reduces production times and eliminates defective parts. One of the most promising methods of integrating metrology into production is the usage of external metrology systems to compensate machine tool errors in real time. The development and experimental performance evaluation of a low-cost, prototype three-axis machine tool that is laser tracker assisted are described in this paper. Real-time corrections of the machine tool's absolute volumetric error have been achieved. As a result, significant increases in static repeatability and accuracy have been demonstrated, allowing the low-cost three-axis machine tool to reliably reach static positioning accuracies below 35 μm throughout its working volume without any prior calibration or error mapping. This is a significant technical development that demonstrated the feasibility of the proposed methods and can have wide-scale industrial applications by enabling low-cost and structural integrity machine tools that could be deployed flexibly as end-effectors of robotic automation, to achieve positional accuracies that were the preserve of large, high-precision machine tools.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 919-933 |
Number of pages | 15 |
Journal | International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology |
Volume | 69 |
Issue number | 1-4 |
Early online date | 8 May 2013 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Oct 2013 |
Bibliographical note
An erratum to this article can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00170-013-5172-xKeywords
- laser tracker
- real-time
- feedback
- control
- compensation
- machine tool
- CNC
- error