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Design and Analysis of a Modular CNC System

Article  in  Computers in Industry · March 1990

DOI: 10.1016/0166-3615(90)90003-8

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Applications
Design and Analysis of a Modular
CNC System
Y. Altintas and J. Peng
The University of British Columbia, Department of Mechanical
Engineering, Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6T 1 W5
Recent focus of manufacturing research has been in the devel-
opment of unmanned machining systems. Modular Computer
Numerical Control (CNC) units, which control and monitor
many tightly coupled machining tasks, are required. This paper
describes the detailed design and analysis of a modular, re-
search CNC system for a milling machine. The feed drive servo
of the milling machine consists of continuous and digital
position control blocks. Continuous and discrete transfer func-
tions of the complete system are derived and experimentally
verified. A state space model of a feed drive servo is developed
for a time domain analysis of actual position, velocity and
armature current for given position input and machining force
disturbances. A complete experimental verification of the sys-
tem's model is presented.
Keywords: Computer Numerical Control, Metal cutting, Ma-
chine tools, Current sensor.
.... Yusuf Altintas was born in Denizli,
Turkey on February 22, 1954. He re-
ceived the BEng degree from Istanbul
Technical University (Turkey) in 1975,
MSc degree from the University of
New Brunswick (Canada) in 1980 and
PhD degree from McMaster Univer-
sity (Canada) in 1987. He has a Post-
graduate Diploma (1977) in Machine
Tool Design Engineering from UMIST
(England). He worked as a machine
tool manufacturing engineer (1977-
1978) at M.K.E. Corporation in
Turkey, as a manufacturing process planning and automation
engineer (1980-1981) at Pratt & Whitney Aircraft of Canada,
and was a principal engineer at the Canadian Institute of
Metalworking (1981-1982) at McMaster University. He joined
the University of British Columbia as an Assistant Professor in
1986, where he is teaching courses and carrying out research in
Manufacturing Engineering.
Elsevier
Computers in Industry 13 (1990) 305-316
0166-3615/90/$3.50 © 1990 - Elsevier Science Publishers B.V.
305
1. Introduction
T h e p r e s e n t goal of m a n u f a c t u r i n g research is
to d e v e l o p flexible, self adjusting an d u n a t t e n d e d
intelligent m a c h i n i n g systems. T h e limited pres-
ence of o p e r a t o r s at u n m a n n e d m a c h i n e tools
leaves the supervision, m o n i t o r i n g and co n t r o l
tasks to c o m p u t e r controllers. S o m e of the im-
p o r t a n t m a c h i n i n g process m o n i t o r i n g an d c o n t r o l
tasks are: in-process d e t e c t i o n of tool wear and
breakage, c h a t t e r d e t e c t i o n an d avoidance, adap-
tive c o n t r o l of chip l o a d for m a x i m u m metal re-
moval, g e o m e t r i c a d a p t i v e co n t r o l for precision
m a c h i n i n g an d in-process gauging [1,10]. These
tasks m u s t be e x e c u t e d in parallel since they have
a c o u p l e d effect on the cu t t i n g process. In o r d e r to
i m p l e m e n t the u n m a n n e d m a c h i n i n g tasks, the
m a c h i n e tool m u s t be e q u i p p e d with sensors and a
m u l t i - p r o c e s s o r b ased C o m p u t e r N u m e r i c a l Con-
troller w h er e c o m p u t a t i o n s d e m a n d i n g tasks are
assigned to d e d i c a t e d processors. C o m m u n i c a t i o n
b e t w e e n tasks, t h er ef o r e processors, m u s t be car-
ried out in short intervals. F o r example, the A d a p -
tive C o n t r o l task m u s t be able to send feeding
velocity u p d a t e s at c o n t r o l intervals of 10 to 20 ms
to the amplifiers. A l t h o u g h some c o m m e r c i a l C N C
systems are m u l t i - p r o c e s s o r based, they do not
p r o v i d e the flexibility to ad d sensing, m o n i t o r i n g
die Peng received his BSc degree in
Electrical Engineering from Shanghai
Jiao Tong University (PRC) in 1982.
He received his MASc degree in
Mechanical Engineering from the
University of British Columbia
(Canada) in 1989, and presently he is
a PhD candidate in the same depart-
ment. His current research topic is in
the area of industrial automation ap-
plied to fish processing industry. He
worked as a computer systems and
digital instrumentation engineer in
Shanghai Computer Corporation between 1982 and 1987.
306 Applications
and control modules. This paper describes the
design of a very modular research CNC system
which allows integration of additional monitoring
and control modules. The proposed system en-
ables simultaneous testing of chatter avoidance,
tool condition monitoring and adaptive control
algorithms, which are coupled in practical machin-
ing operations. The modular CNC system consists
of off the shelf units, and can be easily realized at
other research laboratories.
Although considerable progress in CNC tech-
nology has paralleled developments in electronics
technology, a detailed analysis of feed drive servo
systems for the purpose of precision multi-axes
contouring, adaptive control and monitoring of
machining process has not been studied suffi-
ciently. Significant early work in the area was
primarily carried out by Bollinger [2,3], Stute [8,9]
and Koren [4,5]. They concentrated on engineer-
ing design methods of CNC Systems where ap-
proximate models of the feed drive servo were
sufficient. However, unmanned machining tasks,
in particular precision contouring and adaptive
control, require complete modelling and analysis
of the feed drive control system so that drive
POSITION FEEDBACK
IBM PC
POSITION FEEDBACK
MOTOR I ~ ~ IIIII~"
'MPLIrIERI I SERVO MOTOR
VELOCITY FEEDBACK
POSITION FEEDBACK
I---I
VT I00
VELOCITY FEEDBACK
Fig. 1. Architecture of the UBC CNC milling machine.
Computers in Industry
control dynamics can be decoupled accurately
from the machining process dynamics.
In this paper, a dc motor based velocity servo is
treated as a second-order dynamic system, and the
complete feed drive system is a fourth-order dis-
crete-time system with a digital compensating
filter. Transfer functions of both velocity and
position loops are identified, and experimentally
verified.
An accurate, discrete-time state space model of
the feed drive servo is presented in this paper. The
model allows simulation of all state variables (i.e.
actual position, velocity and motor current) for a
given position, feeding velocity and cutting force
disturbance. This is particularly important for the
analysis of motor current and velocity changes
under cutting force disturbances.
The remainder of the paper is organized as
follows. Section 2 explains the architecture and
physical components of the developed modular
CNC system for a milling machine. Transfer func-
tions of the continuous and digital control compo-
nents of the feed drive system are given in Section
3. Section 4 presents state space modelling. Ex-
perimental results, which verify the feed drive
DC SERVO MOTOR
(X-AXIS)
(Y-AXIS)
C SERVO MOTOR
(Z-AXIS)
Computers in Industry Y. Altintas, J. Peng / Modular CNC System 307

model, are presented in Section 5. The paper is
concluded with a short summary of the findings.
2. Physical Components of the CNC Milling
Machine
The research CNC milling machine may be
introduced in three major parts: machine tool,
feed drive units and the control system as shown
in Fig. 1.
The retrofitted machine tool is a vertical mill-
ing machine with a 5 kW ac motor connected to a
spindle drive gear box. The three feeding axes
(x, y and z) of the machine have recirculating
ball screw drives with 600, 400 and 120 mm travel
limits respectively. All three linear axes are driven
by pulse width modulated (PWM) permanent
magnet dc motors which are directly connected to
the lead screw shafts. The motors are capable of
delivering sufficient continuous torque during
machining at desired feeding velocities. Factory
specifications for the selected servo motors are
listed in Table 1.
A Motorola M68008 processor based motion
control board [12] was used to control feeding
velocity and positions of the three linear axes of
the machine. The motion control card has 16 I / O
lines for logic control functions. Coolant, spindle,
travel limit, feed-hold, amplifier shut-down and
other auxiliary logic control signals are wired to
the I / O lines. Contouring (i.e. linear and circular
interpolation), acceleration, deceleration and dig-
ital compensation functions are also carried out
by the motion control board. The board resides in
a Multibus card cage which can take several mo-
tion control cards (i.e. for an additional rotary
axis control), data acquisition boards and single
board dedicated process control computers (i.e.
tool condition monitoring, process identification
and adaptive control) for modular unmanned
machining research. In order to use the existing
peripherals of the personal computers, the Multi-
bus is connected to the PC bus with a bus inter-
face adaptor. An Intel 80286 CPU with an 80287
mathematics co-processor based PC was used as a
master computer to distribute monitoring and
control tasks to other computer modules on the
Multibus. A full technical wiring diagram of the
CNC unit is provided in Fig. 2 for interested
readers. The machine tool can be used as a stan-
dard CNC machine by loading an in-house devel-
oped ISO N C language emulator in PC. Feeding
velocity, acceleration, deceleration and digital filter
parameters can be changed in real time by sending
the desired values from the PC to the motion
control unit via the bus adaptor. This feature is
particularly important and essential for adaptive
control and machine tool monitoring research.

Table 1 3. Transfer Functions of the Feed Drive Control

Parameters of the feed drive system System
B 0.09 N m / ( r a d / s )
Hg 0.08872 V / ( r a d / s ) Each feed drive control system has two cascaded
Je 0.0036 kg m 2 control loops; an angular velocity control loop
Ka 0.0643 A / A
which consists of an analog amplifier electronics,
Kb 0.3 V / ( r a d / s )
Kd 0.0781 V / c o u n t a dc motor and a velocity feedback unit (tacho-
Ke 636.62 c o u n t s / ( r a d / s ) generator); and the position control loop which
K1 25.5 A / V includes a digital motion controller with a position
Kp 2.5 feedback unit (encoder).
Kv 21.934 V / V
Kt 0.3 N m / A
La 2 mH 3.1. Velocity Control Loop
Ra 0.4 [2
S~ 0.0648 V / V
T~ 0.13183 V / V Unidrive power amplifiers [11] with a current
a -0.8825 feedback loop are used for the control of pulse
b 0 width modulated (PWM) permanent magnet dc
p 5.08 man servo motors (Fig. 3). The operational block di-
Continuous current supply = 15 A
agram of the velocity control system, Fig. 4, was
Peak current supply = 30 A
derived from detailed analysis and measurements
 DMC-230 Motion ControLLer
BALDOR GRAYH[LL
DC Servo 7~CK24
Molor I / 0 ModuLe tltUng
MII'Uf
F4&C
4o.chlne
r~ - - 3 0 o ~
"ICQW~ I
l~74 i I
SPIN
PINDL[
II I I : ~NIEE
[ [ DO~ZN [
)? |7 I
33{
I
, I
. . . .
OOLANT
BRAV
i
RAk'E Z I
6/ ) )I i t
.>9 I J
.)7 I J
)< I .>SI 'J i
/rz .=31 t
3c3 - - !1 i ~ . . . . TAP[
AF'E~4~N I
t I -F- - - L 9 I ' J ~ II~T I
31:3
~m I: L? I I )~'R Id
~c --L5 I
• I TAP[
AP[ ~TARTI
cs : .l ( i LII3E HOLD I
:~klll
) i J

) I i
T ) i
JY ( To Y oxss C i r C u i t 5 ) L.----Jr
wllches NC NC ST I

JZ ( To Z ~×I~ circ~i~ >

'~ke~- PC/AT

m OR
, ii' ~ KC.
~ Co~ct~
A t l

\_
i
ilPAHP h
Bo~r~

~le~Lock B~F?er B~d

Pon~

Zig. 2. Electronics wiring diagram of the CNC feed drive control system.
Computers in Industry Y. Altintas, J. Peng / Modular CNC System 309

Ia Ra
0 6AA/V ~ MECHANICAL
+'
c

_ i La
0 ~
W J e ,B [~kUHU~/p'n~,,O'l
ELECTRICAL
Fig. 3. Schematic diagram of the permanent m a n e t armature
controlled dc s e ~ o motor.

done on the power amplifier unit and dc motor-ta-

ble assembly.
The power amplifier accepts velocity command
signals from the DMC-230 digital motion control
unit [12]. The signal is buffered with a differential
preamplifier Sg and compared with an actual
velocity signal measured by the tachogenerator
feedback unit. The resulting velocity error signal
(in volts) is converted to a desired current by the
current amplifier which has a gain of K~. The
amplifier output current is compared with the
x .i
armature feedback current signal pulled from a
current sense coupler. The PWM circuit, which is
modelled as a gain of Kv, accepts the current
error and outputs a mean voltage of Va to the
armature terminal of the dc motor. The transfer
function between the input velocity command sig-
nal (Vc) and the motor's angular shaft velocity
( W ) is found as follows. The voltage applied on
l
the armature of the motors is used to overcome
losses in the resistance, inductance and back elec-
tromotor voltage (Figure 3), e-
g
Va = Rala + + KbW. (1) O

O
f~
The armature current produces a magnetic field
Y~
between the armature and constant field stator, .r-

which gives a torque proportional to the rotation

of the motor,
T m = K t I ~. (2)
The motor torque is spent in accelerating the
equivalent inertia, and overcoming the viscous
friction and cutting torque reflected on the motor's
shaft.
dW
rm=Je~ ~- + B W + To. (3) O
.u.
310 Applications Computers in lndusto'

Taking the Laplace transforms of (1)-(3), the will be called a count. A two-channel encoder with
second-order dynamics of the velocity controller one thousand slots and a quadrature decoding
and its parameters are derived from the control circuit is used, to obtain a corresponding count
block diagram (Fig. 4) and given as follows: length of:
W(s) K, P
1 c o u n t - 4000 [mm],
Vc(s) - s 2 + Kzs + K 3 ' (4)
where p is the pitch of the feed screw in ram. The
where the parameters K 1, K 2 and K 3 are defined: research CNC machine's feed screw has a pitch of
KtSgKiKv p = 5.08 mm, thus 1 count =0.00127 mm. The
K1 LaJe ' gain of the encoder is given as,

B Ra + K v K a
K2= ~ + La '
B ( R a -}- g v g a ) + g t ( g b -~- n g T g g v g l )
K3= Jeta
The parameters K t, R a, La, K b and Hg are
provided by the manufacturers of the amplifier
and dc motor. The remaining power amplifier
p a r a m e t e r s ( K a , g l , K v , Sg and Tg) were mea-
sured from the circuits, by applying known signals
to the input port of the circuit in question, and
then measuring the corresponding output with a
voltmeter and a currentmeter. The calculated val-
ues of K 1, K 2 and g 3 are given in Table 2.
It must be noted that depending on the friction
characteristics of the machine tool's guideway, it
may be necessary to include static friction as an
additional disturbance torque to the velocity loop.
An average viscous damping coefficient of B =
0.09 N m / ( r a d / s ) is identified by measuring arma-
ture current at various steady-state feeding veloci-
ties on the research machine, see (2) and (3).
3.2. Position Control Loop
4000
Ke- 2"~ [counts/rad]. (5)
The u p - d o w n counter acts like an integrator which
contains the instantaneous position error. Since
the input to the controller is either parabolic (i.e.
acceleration and deceleration period) or ramp type
(i.e. steady-state velocity), the u p - d o w n counter
and encoder gain can be cascaded to the end of
the velocity loop as:
Sa(s ) g e
W(s) s (6)
Combining (6) with the transfer function of the
velocity loop (4) yields the transfer function of the
continuous part of the feed drive control system:
K1 Ke
Co(s) = s 2 + K2s + K3 S - (7)
The velocity control signal V~ of the digital motion
control unit is applied to the power amplifier at
T = 1 ms intervals via a D / A converter which has
a gain of K d. The zero-order hold equivalent of
the Gc(s ) for a one millisecond sampling interval
is:

Each position control loop has an u p - d o w n

counter which receives a reference command posi-
which, after taking the z transform, becomes
tion and actual position of the table measured by
the shaft encoder. The position is fed into the Gc(2. ) gdglKe
u p - d o w n counter in the form of pulse trains whose K3
frequency is equal to the command and actual
b2 z2 + blz + bo
feeding velocities. Henceforth, each position pulse x (8)
( z - 1)(z 2 + a , z + ao)"
The derived expressions for the parameters of
Table 2 Gc(z ) are given in Table 3. Calculated values are
Calculated values of the velocity loop (eqn. 4) given in Table 4. Discrete position error E ( z ) is
the difference between the reference and actual
K1 1510156.0
K2 930.178 position of the table:
K3 303093.90 E(z)=Xr(z ) - X a ( z ). (9)
Computers in Industry Y. Altintas, J. Peng / Modular CNC System 311

Table 3 Table 5
Coefficients of Gc(z ) (eqn. 8) Coefficients of Gcl(Z) (eqn. 11)

1 _ f12 = ( b l + ab2)/b2
b2 = T - ~ e - a ' ~ " r s i n ( ~ d T )
0~d
fll = ( bo + a b l ) / b 2
flo = abo / b2
K 1K e K d Kp
. - [ sin(~OdT) ] a3=al+ K33 b2-1
b1= 2 e-~'°'/
[
"
%
' " rcos(,%r) J
K 1K eK d Kp
a 2 = a o- a 1+ ~ ( b l - ab2)
+ Kz(1 - e -2~'~°r) - 2 e - ~ ' - r sin(~aT ) K2 ~ n
K3 K3 Wd
K 1K e K d Kp
b0 = Te-2~,,',T_ l e - ~ ' , T s i n ( 0 : d T ) °tl K3 ( bo - ab I ) - a 0
6dd
K1KeKdKp
+ ~ e-2~'.r+e -~'.r sin(wdT ) - c o s ( % T ) GO K-"-~ ab°

K1KeKdKpb2
al=--2e ~ . r cos(wdT) Kcl K3
a 0 = e-2~°:nT

the smooth transient response in order to avoid

The position error is passed through a digital
compensation filter whose parameters are tuned to
provide a smooth transient response without any
overshoot. The structure of the digital filter D ( z )
is:
z+a
D ( z ) = Kp z + b .
The closed loop transfer function of the complete
feed drive control system is derived as follows:
Xa(Z) O(z)Gc(z)
Gcl(Z) = ~ = 1 + D(z)Gc(z
or
z3 + f12z2 + flaz + t8°
Gcl( Z )
K c l z 4 + a3 Z3 + a 2 Z2 "1- OllZ "~- ot 0
The parameters of the closed loop transfer func-
tion G~l(Z ) are given in Tables 5 and 6.
There are two critical performance require-
ments from the feed drive servo: The first being
oscillatory cutting during velocity changes; and
the second is to minimize the steady-state position
error (i.e. following error) in order to achieve
precision multi-axis contouring. At steady-state
ramping of the position with a feeding velocity of
fc (counts/s), the following error is derived as [7]:
(10)
Lr
ess = z-~llim(z - 1 ) D ( z ) G ~ ( z ) " (12)
Substituting (8) and (10) into (12) gives the para-
metric expression for the following error in the
) ' feed drives as:
LK3T (1 + b)(1 + a I + a0)
ess = K1KeKpKd (1 + a ) ( b 2 + b 1 + bo)" (13)
. (11)
It is evident that, the higher the open loop transfer
function gain, (i.e. D ( z ) G c ( z ) ) , the lower the fol-
lowing error will be, which is desired for precision
Table 6
Calculated coefficients of Gcl(z )

Table 4
& 2.2925
Calculated coefficients of Gc(z ) B1 -2.177
B0 0.552
b2 0.4 x 10-4 a3 - 2.1791
bl 1.27 × 10-4 ~2 1.6491
b0 0.25 × 10 -4 ot 1 -0.444
al - 1.20204 ot o 0.01272
a0 0.39448 Kcl 0.0229
312 Applications Computers in lndust O,

multi-axis contouring. However, high open loop where state and input vectors at sampling interval
gain may result in an undesirable oscillatory re- k are defined as:
sponse in the servo. The digital filter parameters
were tuned to achieve an optimum feed drive xc(k ) = [Ia(k), W ( k ) , Xa(k)] T,
servo response.
uc(k) = iVy(k), To(k)]' ,
~(T)=e a~r=[0ia(v)], (i, j = 1 , 2 , 3 ) ,
4. State Space Modelling of the Feed Drive Con-
trol System H(T)=freac'dt. Bc=[h,,], ( i = 1, 2, 3),
J0
A state space representation of the feed drive (j=l, 2).
servo was developed in order to verify the derived
The matrix ~ ( T ) is computed from the eigenval-
model using experimentally measured time do-
ues of the A~ matrix for the discrete-time equiv-
main response data. The servo is again divided
alent of the continuous-time system.
into continuous and discrete sections.
The discrete-time components of the position
The continuous part of the system consists of
control loop consists of digital filter D(z) and
the velocity control loop (7) and the u p - d o w n
D / A converter gain K d. The velocity command
counter (6). Three states--the armature current
signal can be expressed in the z-domain as:
I~, the angular velocity W and the actual position
Xa - are derived from Fig. 4 as: z + a d [ Xr(z) - Xa( z )] . (16)
Vc(z ) = KpT-4--~K
a~c(t) =Acx~(t ) + Bcu~(t), (14)
The equation can be rearranged as:
where the state vector x~(t) and input vector u~(t)
are defined as
~ ( z ) =KpKd[Xr(z ) - Xa(z)] + Va(z), (17)

where
Xc(t ) = [Ia(t), W(t), Xa(t)] T,
Va(z)= K pK a za+- bb[t X ~ ( z ) - X a ( z ) ] . (18)
Uc(t) = [ < ( t ) , ~(tl] ~
A c and B~ are constant matrices: The new variables V~ and Va can be treated as
fourth state respectively. After rearranging (18)
KvK a + R~ K b + KvKiTgHg and (16) and taking their inverse z-transforms, the
0 following discrete-time state equations are ob-
La L~,
tained:
Ac= Kt B
0 '
J~ Jo Vd(k + 1) = -bVd(k ) + K p K d ( a - b)
0 K, 0
X[X~ik)-Xa(k)], (19)
KvK1Sg ] Vc(k ) = KpKd[Xr(k ) - Xa(k)] + Vd(k ).
La 0
=
1 .
The discrete-time state equation (19) can be com-
0 -Z~ bined with the state equation (15), which repre-
sents the discrete-time equivalent of the continu-
0 0 ous part of the feed drive servo. An algebraic
The state equation (14) represents the continuous rearrangement of the equations yields the follow-
part of the feed drive servo system, which has the ing complete state equations for the feed drive
following discrete equivalent solution for an ob- servo:
servation interval of T = 1 ms [7]: x ( k + 1) = G ( T ) x ( k ) + F ( T ) u ( k ),
(20)
xo(k+l)=~(T)xc(k)+H(T)u~(k), (15) y ( k ) = Cx(k) + Du(k),
Computers in Industry Y. Altintas, J. Peng / Modular CNC System 313

where state, input and output vectors are defined 5. Experimental Verification of the Feed Drive
respectively as: Servo Model

V(k)] The model of the feed drive servo was experi-

Ia(k) mentally verified in both the frequency and time
x(k)= W(k) ' domains. The verification is carried out separately
for the velocity and position loops.
Xa(k)
5.1. VelocityLoop
.(k)= L[ re(k)],
The transfer function of the velocity control, as
derived in (4) can be rewritten as:
[ V(k)
|Ia(k) W( s )
Vc(s) s2 + 2~cons + con
2" (21)
[w(k) Here the natural frequency (COn) and damping
LXa(k) ratio (~) of the velocity loop are defined as fol-
The state matrix G(T), input matrix F(T), output lows:
matrix C(T) and transmission matrix D(T) are con = ~33 [rad/s],
defined in order as follows:
K2
-b 0 0 -KpKd(a - b) ] 2K~3 < 1 ,
hll ~n ~12 ~13 -- hnKpKd where K 1, K 2 > 0. The time domain step response
a(T) =
h21 ~21 ~22 ~23 -- h z l K p K d ' of this underdamped velocity servo is expressed
as:
L h31 031 ~b32 ~33 -- h31KpKd
V~K1 { e-~°'°'
KpKd(a- b) 0 ] W(t) = ---5-- 1
COn ~1 - ~2
F(T) = hllKpKd h12
h21KpKd h22 '
X sin COn~I-- ~2 t + tan 1 ~
h31KpKd h32
.

Experimental step response of the velocity loop

was obtained with and without the table assembly
C= 1 0 by applying Vc = 1.0 V to the terminals of the
0 1 amplifier and simultaneously measuring the veloc-
0 0
ity from the tachogenerator. Analytical (22) and
- Kp K d 0] measured step responses of the velocity control
servo are shown in Fig. 5. The step response
D= 0 0 ]. results measured without the table indicate that
0 0
0 0 the theoretical and experimental results are in
agreement. There is a high-frequency component
The output vector y(k) gives access to three use- of the step response when the motor is attached to
ful dynamic parameters in the feed drive servo, the leadscrew, which is due to the mechanical
namely: the armature current, angular velocity dynamics of the leadscrew and table assembly.
and the position of the table for a given position Overall, the tuned dynamics of the velocity loop
command and applied cutting torque. Other states are sufficiently fast for the controlled milling ma-
in the control system can be easily found by chine.
multiplying them with the appropriate gains The frequency response of the velocity loop
according to the block diagram shown in Fig. 4. was analyzed in order to determine the bandwidth
 314 Applications Computers" in Industry
8 o-
Theoretical -2- _ Experimental
-4-

-6-
-8-

-I0

-12

-14

-18
Theoretical
-16

-39

-S4-

-39

-1 ................... i ................... i ................... i ................... i ................... i -39 ......... i ......... i ......... i ......... i ......... i ......... l ......... $ ......... i,

10 39 39 40 50 10 39 39 40 39 aO 70 90

mu [Ksl nu~usa~ [k]

Theoretical Experimental -,0 Experimental

~ 5 ~ -39 Theoretical
e
|
\
! ,
! 3-
u
o
d
~ z i-70
-39

-39

I I I -139 ......... i ......... i ......... , .........

39 4o 39 40 39 90

me [Ms] !'UqUn~ [ e.,,]

Fig. 5. Step response of the velocity loop. Top: table discon- Fig. 6. Frequency response of the velocity loop.
nected. Bottom: table connected.

of the controller. The magnitude ratio M(o~) and
the phase angle q~(~0) of the closed velocity loop
controller can be derived from (4) as:
M(co) = 20 log(K1/K3)
- 20 log[(1-
0(~0) = - t a n - ~ [ ( 2 ~ ) / ( 1 - ( ~ ) 2 ) ]
The frequency response measurements were car-
ried out with a Bruel&Kjaer Fourier analyzer.
+ 2,
(23)
• model was modified to include only the motor's
The analyzer's random signal generator output
was fed to the input terminal of the amplifier, and
the velocity was measured from the tachogenera-
tor output. The simulated and measured frequency
response results are shown in Fig. 6. Although the
model and experimental responses agreed fairly
well, there were some deviations. A separate
frequency response measurement was carried out
by removing the motor from the table. When the
shaft inertia and viscous damping, the measured
and simulated frequency response results were in
perfect agreement. Hence, it is concluded that the
Computers in Industry Y. Altintas, J. Peng / Modular CNC System 315

small deviations in the frequency response test

with the table assembly is due to the presence of Experimental
18
unmodelled nonlinear friction and mechanical dy-
namics of the feed drive assembly. The results also le.

indicate that the servo seems to be able to follow t#,-

feeding velocity changes up to 60 Hz which is the
12- al
the bandwidth of the velocity loop, see Fig. 6.
1o-

5.2. Position Loop 8-

o-
In addition to the velocity loop, the position
loop consists of an encoder, digital filter and 4-

integrator (i.e. u p - d o w n counter) which are mostly

2-
digital and their transfer functions are precisely
known, see Fig. 4. Digital filter parameters are o-

tuned in such a way that the position loop is well -2-

~.00 40.00 ~.00 90.00 100.00 120.00 140.00 160,00
damped and the rise time is reasonably fast. The o.oo

following digital filter (which pushes one of the [.sl

Fig. 7. Transient feeding velocity response of the feed drive
system poles toward the center of the unit circle)
servo.
was selected and found to be satisfactory:
D ( z ) = 2.5 z - 0.8825
Z apparent that the analytical and experimental val-
The remaining parameters of the position loop are ues are in close agreement.
listed in Table 1. The calculated values of the state The steady state position error can be calcu-
space equation (20) are given as: lated by substituting the servo parameter values in
(13), thus:
0 0 0 0.1724 ess = 0.0137 L [counts].
13.5962 0.5085 - 2 . 4 2 0 3 - 2 . 6 5 5 5
G(T) = The steady state error for fc = 10000 c o u n t s / s
0.6231 0.0617 0.8638 - 0 . 1 2 1 7
(12.7 m m / s ) feeding velocity was measured by
0.1392 0.0219 0.6028 0.9728
reading the contents of the u p - d o w n counter from
- 0.1724 0 the motion-control computer. An average follow-
2.6555 0.3749 ing error of ess = 129 counts (0.1638 mm) was
r(T) =
0.1217 - 0.2634 ' observed, which is 8 counts (0.01 mm) less than
0.0272 - 0.0859 the analytical prediction. Measurements across a
0 -0.195 - range of velocities showed that the steady state
1 0 0 error is not quite linear, this being mainly due to
C=
Ii °0
0
0.195
1
0
0
1
' effect of the nonlinear friction characteristics of
the table which are not accounted in the linear
model.
D= 0
0
0 i]-
The transient response of the position loop was
6. Conclusion

A practical and analytical guide for the design

experimentally tested by sending a feedhold com-
m a n d to the motion controller during steady-state
feeding of the table. The feedhold c o m m a n d sets
the feeding velocity c o m m a n d to zero and bypasses
the deceleration velocity shaper. The resulting
feeding velocities are shown in Fig. 7, where it is
principles of a modular research C N C system is
presented. The architecture of the controller, de-
rivations of transfer functions and state space
models of the physical and digital control modules
are substantiated with experimental verifications.
A state space model of the complete feed drive
316 Applications Computers in Industry'

positioning system is presented. The developed Acknowledgement

model can be used in time domain simulations of
positioning accuracy, variations in the current and
This research was supported by the National
velocity states for time varying position and cut-
Sciences and Engineering Research Council of
ting torque disturbances.
Canada under the grants OGP-0006164 and EQP-
0028762. The authors wish to thank research en-
gineers G. Martin and G. Wright for their assis-
Nomenclature
tance in retrofitting the machine tool.
B viscous damping coefficient
Hg tachometer constant
It, armature current
Jr equivalent inertia reflected to the motor
References
shaft
K~ armature current feedback gain
K h voltage constant of the motor (back EMF) [1] Y. Altintas, 1. Yellowley and J. Tlusty, "The detection of
tool breakage in milling operations", ASME J. Eng. Ind.,
K d D / A converter gain
Vol. 110, pp. 271-277, 1988.
Ke encoder gain [2] J.G. Bollinger, G. Stute and H. Van Brussel, "Digital
K~ velocity error preamplifer gain controls and feed drives: state of the art and new develop-
Kp digital filter gain ments". Ann. CIRP, Vol. 29, No. 2, pp. 497-506, 1982.
K, torque constant of the motor [3] N.A. Duffle and J.G. Bollinger, "Distributed computing
systems for multiple processor industrial control", Ann.
K, PWM voltage gain
C1RP, Vol. 29, No. 1, pp. 357 362, 1979.
L, armature inductance of the motor [4] Y. Koren, "Design of computer control for manufacturing
Ra armature resistance of the motor systems", Trans. ASME, J. Eng. Ind., Vol. 101, No. 3, pp.
Sg velocity command signal gain of the ampli- 326-332, August 1979,
fier [5] Y. Koren, Computer Control of Manufacturing Systems,
McGraw Hill, New York, 1983.
T. cutting torque reflected on the motor shaft
[6] C.C.H. Ma and Y. Altintas, "Direct adaptive cutting-force
Tg tachometer feedback signal gain control of milling processes", Automatica, in press.
Tm motor's useful torque [7] K. Ogata, Discrete Time Control Systems, Prentice Hall,
1,{~ armature voltage Englewood Cliffs, N J, pp. 450-455, 1987.
V, velocity command signal [8] G. Stute and P. Klemm, "The application of a modular
multiprocessor NC system", Int. J. Mach. Tool Des. Res.,
X~ actual position of the table
Vol. 22, pp. 215-222, 1981.
X~ position command [9] G. Stute and H. Worn, "A modular function oriented
W angular velocity of the motor shaft multiprocessor NC system", Ann. C1RP, Vol. 27, No. 1.
a, b zero and pole of the digital filter pp. 261-264, 1978.
fc feeding velocity command [10] J. Tlusty, G.C. Andrews, "Critical review of sensors for
unmanned machining", Ann. C1RP. Vol. 32, No. 2, pp.
p pitch of the leadscrew shaft
563-572. 1983.
x state output vector [11] Baldor DC Serl~o Motor and UMI Amplifier Manual, Bal-
u state input vector dor Servo Products, Fremont, CA, 1987.
velocity control loop damping ratio [12] DMC-230 Motion Control Unit Manual, Galil Motion
~0, natural frequency of the velocity control Control Inc., Palo Alto, CA, 1987.
servo

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