Identification of angular and positional deviations inherent to 5-axis machining centers with a tilting-rotary table by simultaneous four-axis control movements

This paper describes a method for identifying the eight deviations inherent to five axis control machining centers by means of simultaneous four-axis control movements. Some methods to identify the deviations have been proposed. However, a simultaneous four-axis control technique using a ball bar instrument has not been applied to the measurement of relative displacements between the main spindle and the worktable. Furthermore, the method for assessing the deviations from the trajectories has not been proposed. Thus, in this paper, a calibration method based on the simultaneous four-axis control technique is proposed for five axis control machining centers with a tilting rotary table. To confirm the validity of the proposed method, simulations were conducted. The trajectories were obtained by means of a mathematical model into which the eight deviations were substituted. In the first step, four of the eight deviations were estimated by ail observation equation for which two measurement trajectories and six reference ones were used. In the second step, the remaining four deviations were geometrically calculated using the values estimated by the observation equation. As a result, it was found that the proposed method was sufficient to identify the deviations accurately. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.