Summary of articles part II feed drives

1-Machine tool feed drives:

Feed drives are used to position the machine tool components carrying the cutting
tool and work piece to the desired location; hence their positioning accuracy and
speed determine the quality and productivity of machine tools. Feed drives are
either powered by linear motors directly, or by rotary motors via ball screw and
nut assembly. Different types of guides are used in feed drive systems such as
Rolling guides, Friction guide, Hydrostatic guides. The ball-screw and linear
drives are most commonly used as machine tool feed drives. Machine tools with
long working paths use rack-pinion-drive. Rack-pinion-drives are recommended
for long travel distances. By adding several racks together, very long feed travel
can be realized. The ball-screw is currently the most frequently used in feed drives
of the machine tools. Also, a variety of electrical motors are used in machine tools
as well. Feed drives use position, velocity, acceleration and load sensors to
improve their positioning accuracy and response bandwidth.

2-Machine tool feed drives and their control-A survey of the state of the art:

Machine tool feed drives control the position and velocity of machine tool slides
or axes in accordance with commands generated by CNC interpolators. Feed
drive performance assessment and dynamic modeling must begin with
consideration of the hardware including drive actuators and associated
electronics. Feed drive control problems classified in a number of ways
depending on their requirements. Point to point control is relevant for rapid
operations.

3-A systematic approach to design high-performance feed drive systems:

A systematic design methodology for the mechatronic system composed of

mechanical and control subsystems is proposed to design high speed and high-
precision feed drive systems. High-speed/precision feed drive systems have been
rapidly adopted in aerospace, semiconductor, die and mold manufacturing
industries. The need for the high performance feed drive systems in
manufacturing industries comes from the demand for higher productivity and
benefits in machining processes such as good surface finish, improved chatter
stability and tool life. Accurate models of the mechanical and control subsystems
are indispensable to perform the systematic design satisfactorily. Mechanical
characteristics of a feed drive system such as overall flexibility, stiffness, natural
frequency and inertia affect significant effects to the design optimization. PID
feedback controllers are generally used to compensate for steady-state error and
disturbances such as external loads and friction forces. However, the PID
controllers have several drawbacks such as poor tracking performance and severe
overshoot. Geometric and Contour error ratio can be Evaluated by factors of feed
drive systems. A systematic design methodology is proposed to design a high-
speed/precision feed drive system. In addition to the strict modeling of
subsystems, an accurate identification process of the mechanical subsystem has
been conducted.

Comparative Investigation of Rotary and Linear Motor Feed Drive

Systems for High Precision Machine Tools:

In precision machining a position accuracy of 0.01micrometer is a desired

standard. A new control applying oversampling methods for the current
measurement has been developed in order to use a linear motor as a high-
precision feed drive for a sub micrometer range machine tool. Steel cutting down
to 0.01 micrometer would save grinding and honing processes which are
necessary today. This kind of technology requires utmost stiff machine tools with
high guidance accuracy and stick-slip free motion down to lowest feed slide
velocities (50 - 100 p / s) together with a control concept providing both an
excellent tracking performance and a fast disturbance suppression. For
experimental setup a lathe has designed and built which consists of a granite
machine bed fixed on a special concrete fundament which virtually decouples the
environmental oscillations from the machine. Using oversampling methods in the
current measurement and a high resolution PWM of the inverter a linear motor
has successfully been used as a high-precision feed drive for a Sub micrometer
range lathe and yields better results than any rotary drive system with precision
spindle-nut elements.