Error Modeling in a Reconfigurable Machine Tool

This paper proposes a new approach for tool tip error estimation for reconfigurable machine tools by linearly adding the module errors represented by a screw in global coordinate. The presented method is ideal for modular structured reconfigurable machine tools since the errors are represented in modules’ coordinate system in coordinate independent screw representation method. The contribution of each error sources is then estimated by linear combination (AKA parallel combination) after the error screws are transformed into the global coordinate system of the machine tools. The presented method is verified through the comparison with the serial matrix multiplication method proposed by Moon et al. [3] Simulations for the above mentioned methods are run and total tool tip errors are compared to study the feasibility of parallel method. The study shows the errors are smaller for parallel combination and both methods have similar trends over the work volume.