Proposal of a Machining Test to Evaluate Dynamic Synchronization Error of Rotary and Linear Axes With Reversal of Rotation Direction

Abstract

The five-axis machining of a free-form surface often contains the reversal of a rotary axis' rotation direction with linear axis synchronized with it. This paper proposes a machining test to quantitatively evaluate the influence of the reversal of rotation direction on the surface geometry. In the five-axis machining, the trajectory of tool position and orientation is firstly given in the workpiece coordinate system by the CAM (Computer-aided Manufacturing) software, and the CNC (Computerized Numerical Control) system converts it to the machine coordinate system to calculate command trajectories. This paper clarifies that the tool path smoothing in the machine coordinate system can potentially cause a large contour error because of the dynamic synchronization error of rotary and linear axes. Although some academic works in the literature presented the smoothing in the workpiece coordinate system, many commercial CNC systems still employ the smoothing in the machine coordinate system, partly because machine tool users or makers do not clearly see how significant this influence can be on the machining accuracy. The proposed machining test enables a user to quantitatively evaluate it. The machining experiment shows that the geometric error of the finished test piece was as large as 0.16 mm under the conventional smoothing in a commercial CNC system, which can be significantly larger than the influence of other typical geometric errors of a five-axis machine tool. This paper shows, by numerical simulation, that the smoothing in the workpiece coordinate system can completely eliminate this contour error.

Experimental comparison of non-contact and tactile R-test instruments in dynamic measurement

“…In the S-shape machining test, described in ISO 10791-7 [20], a "scratch" can be often observed on the finished surface due to the dynamic synchronization error induced by the five-axis singularity [21,22]. Li et al [23] presented a machining test designed to observe the influence of the dynamic synchronization error under the reversal of rotation direction. These works clearly show potentially significant influence of the dynamic synchronous error of rotary and linear axes on the machining accuracy.…”