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Abstract
One possibility to increase the performance of machine tools is the achievement of higher accelerations and jerks of moved slides
and stands. By this the energy consumption and machining-costs can be optimized.
Nowadays machine tool structures are already optimized and further enhancements are not easily achieved. The paper deals with
the mechatronic system optimization of a large-scale HSC- and HPC- portal milling centre for e.g. forming tools. This includes the
identification of dynamic limiting structures and the following optimization by mechatronic system-monitoring. From process ne-
cessities a machining-time reduction by higher accelerations and improved process stability is intended. The system parameters
where achieved by the implementation of a redundant axis and the usage of up-to-date lightweight design by reinforced plastics.
All over the design phase the structure was constantly monitored regarding their dynamic behaviour. Furthermore a model was used
using a state space to prejudge the machining time for a concrete example cycle. So even before any physical prototype exists
the mechatronic system-behaviour of the machine tool was pre estimated using a virtual mechatronic model. This allows for a vir-
tual product design with a new and improved quality of safety in achieving the pre-defined goals.
2012 The
2012 Published byPublished
Authors. Elsevier BV. Selection
by Elsevier B.V.and/or peer-review
Selection under responsibility
and/or peer-review of Prof. Konrad
under responsibility Wegener
of Professor Konrad Wegener
Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.
Keywords: HSC machining; machine tool; mechatronic simulation
2212-8271 2012 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Professor Konrad Wegener
Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.procir.2012.04.055
308 R. Neugebauer et al. / Procedia CIRP 1 (2012) 307 312
2. New dynamic HPC machine tool concept fore the moment of inertia is as small as possible, on the
other side several criteria for designing dynamic and
As introduced, the improvement of the performance accurate NC-axis have to be considered. As suitable so-
of machine tools is a uniformly goal in the design pro- lution for the requirements was selected a box-in-box
cess. The relative performance (cutting volume / work concept with direct motion of the Z-support in X-
piece volume) of machine tool usually decreases with an direction, see Figure 1.
increasing machine tools dimension. Causative for this
effect is mainly the dynamic performance of the feed-
drives, which are for their part based on
larger loads and therefore larger load moments of
inertia, which require high acceleration forces and
lead to larger load moment of inertia induced struc-
tural displacements
larger dimensions of moments of inertia, attended by
lower natural frequencies and reduced static and dy-
Fig. 1. Design concept of a large HPC machining centre with redun-
namic stiffness. dant X motions
To increase the performance of mid- to large scale
state-of-the-art machine tools, passive lightweight design The Y-slide is placed between two fixed portals (out-
measures are implemented to achieve the highest possi- er box, ball screw drive axis or linear feed drive axis)
ble lightweight factor for the machine components and carries inside the redundant X1-slide (box). This
through appropriate material selection and design [5]. inner box carries itself the Z-slide (Z-support). The
A new active mechatronic concept of extreme light- large-stroke and heavy built X drive axis bearing the
weight design is to split the moment of inertia of a heavy work piece is designed as toothed-rack pinion feed-
feed-drive axis to avoid the disadvantages. One part (of drive. To further increase the dynamic performance of
the feed-drive) is heavy built and realises large strokes, the machine tool, the Z-support is designed as fibre-
but the other part is built light for high dynamics. For a reinforced plastic structure (reinforced-plastics metal
high dynamic performance when cutting, the small axis hybrid design). The dominant bending strain, character-
is moved locally with high accelerations whereas the ized by a longitudinal strain load characteristic along Z
heavy axis is realising the main motion over longer peri- of the Z-support, favours the fibre reinforced material.
ods. This concept, known as redundancy, principles for The realisation of such a concept and the general im-
the splitting of necessary motions and a concrete ma- provement of already well design machine tools is only
chine tool concept was introduced for example in [6-7]. possible by a holistic simulation of the system in the
The concept uses the necessary serial arrangement, so design phase. The state-of-the-art tool of mechatronic
the heavy slide with global motion carries the small slide simulation is capable to pre-judge a design regarding the
with local motion. systems dynamic behaviour [8].
In this paper an alternative concept of motion redun- Before discussing the result of the mechatronic simu-
dancy is introduced, where the heavy slide carries the lation of the new HPC-machine tool design in chapter 5
small slide no longer, but the force flux is closed through the theoretical concept of the coupled simulation is in-
the basement. This means practically that the heavy troduced (chapter 3) and general aspects of feed-drive to
work piece load of large forming tools and long global structural stiffness and load ratios are derived from a 3-
strokes is concentrated on one side, and the dynamic mass minimal model (chapter 4).
small local axis is placed at the tool site. The improve-
ment to the solution introduced in [6] is that the large 3. Virtual product design using a holistic
axis no longer carries the small one, thereby is no dy- mechatronic systems analysis of the dynamic
namic feedback between the redundant axes, so the sys- machine behaviour
tem is de-coupled regarding the redundant feed-drives.
Specific selected as redundant axis is the feed drive The purposes for the mechatronic systems analysis of
axis with the largest moment of inertia, which typically machine tools, besides the determination of static char-
is the X-axis of large milling centres, e.g. for forming acteristics, are the recognition of the dynamic behaviour
tools. The X motion is realised by the motion of the of the closed control system, e.g. with disturbance trans-
bench (portal machining centre) or by the motion of the fer behaviour on the tool centre point (TCP) and control
milling column (column or gantry milling centre). Based transfer behaviour of the axes. From the point of view of
on result from [6-7], a travelling range of 150 mm is machine dynamic, for a good and balanced design a rela-
necessary for the small dynamic axis. This axis has to be tive compliance frequency response without significant
integrated that way, that on one side the mass and there-
R. Neugebauer et al. / Procedia CIRP 1 (2012) 307 312 309
dominance of an individual natural frequency should be Regarding further details on the topic and the mathemat-
intended. This approach is shown in the following. ical solution see [8].
The maximum dynamic displacements for the several 4.2. Dynamic displacement for an acceleration of 10
generalised coordinates can be derived from the so- m/s for different loads
called modal matrix afterwards, see [14] for details.
From the results of paragraph 4.2 it derived that the
4.1. Results for different combinations of feed-drive to load mass (and from it specifically the moments of iner-
load moments of inertia and combinations of stiffness of tia of the load) itself does not determine the dynamic
the feed-drive to the stiffness of the structure stiffness of a system. The dynamic stiffness is deter-
mined from the ratio of the moments of inertia of the
Based on the 3 axis model, different mass and stiff- feed-drive towards the moment of inertia of the load and
ness ratios where considered (total 8x8 = 64 Versions): the ratio of the stiffness of the feed-drive regarding the
linear mass of feed drive m1: stiffness of the structure (c1).
500/750/1.000/1.500/2.500/5.000/10.000 kg It seems that high feed-drive stiffness (c1) is essential,
linear mass of loads m2 /m3: 5.000 kg each but that the load mass is not critical as long as the ratio
linear stiffness of the feed drive to the structure 1 of the moments of inertia is constant. But the well
(e.g. slide) c1: 50/75/100/150/200/250/500/1e3 N/m known correlation between force and acceleration has to
linear stiffness of the structure 1 (e.g. slide) to the be considered (F = m*a). So if the load mass, which has
structure 2 (e.g. milling head) c2: 1.000 N/m to be accelerated, is much higher, the force (of the feed
All masses are linearised applied to the site of the drive or the related moment of the feed drive) has to be
load mass (TCP-site). The results are the same if all equal higher for the same acceleration. Assuming a con-
masses are related on the site of the feed-drive, the sys- stant stiffness of the feed drive regarding the structure
tem is then represented through a 3-mass torsion system. (c1), a bigger load mass leads to higher acceleration
Fig. 3 gives the results for the considered relations. forces and therefore much larger dynamic displace-
We get the following correlations: ments. Figure 4 shows the resulting displacements and
The lower the moment of inertia of the feed-drive eigenfrequencies assuming an acceleration of 10 m/s for
(m1) towards the moments of inertia of the loads a constant linearised feed-drive mass and constant static
(m2+m3), the higher the dynamic stiffness of the sys- stiffness c1 and c2 of 1.000 N/m and different load
tem. masses between 1.000 and 20.000 kg. It is apparent that
The more rigid the feed-drive is coupled to the struc- a weight reduction brings lower dynamic displacements,
ture 1, the higher the dynamic stiffness of the system. even if the static and dynamic stiffness stays equal.
The influence of the stiffness ratio of feed-drive to
structure 1 is higher than the influence of the mo-
ment-of-inertia ratio of the feed-drive (m1) regarding
the loads (m2+m3).
Several items are to be considered. First, below a val-
ue of about 2 for (ratio of moment of inertia to feed-
drive) no more improvement of the dynamic stiffness is
realised. Furthermore, a high correlates in reality al-
ways to some degree with a low stiffness c1 (stiffness of
the feed drive to the structure 1) because of an associated
high transmission ratio. It has to be considered that a
transmission transmits also the displacements of the
drive site to the site of the structure 1, which is repre-
sented by a low linearised stiffness c1 in the model. Fig. 4. Dynamic displacement of the 3-mass system (regarding q3
TCP) for an acceleration of 10 m/s and different loads (constant stiff-
ness c1 and c2 and constant moment of inertia of the feed drive)
tronic simulation. The first concept included a linear higher dynamic stiffness for both axes, even the minimal
motor feed-drive X1-axis with 4 separate linear drives. stiffness of the X1-axis is further improved (because of a
The Y-axis is implemented as a relatively weak ball stiffer base and no cross- coupling). The Y-axis is abso-
screw axis with two separate rotary drives. After the first lute rigid, which is not a realistic design. But it shows
system analysis (see chapter 5.2 and 5.3) and the identi- clearly that a stiff feed-drive design is essential for a
fication of the Y-axis as the dynamic weak axis the sys- good dynamic behaviour (see chapter 4.2).
tem was modelled with an extreme rigid Y-axis being
the opposite extreme.
Fig. 6 shows the results for the disturbance frequency Fig 7. TCP displacements for the HPC-milling centre with redundant
responses of the version with rigid Y feed-drive. The X1-axis (original design with ball-screw linear drive for the Y-axis)
behaviour of the mechanical system is the same with
312 R. Neugebauer et al. / Procedia CIRP 1 (2012) 307 312
Fig 8 shows the same dynamic displacements at the also the cutting-time pre-estimation of machining pro-
TCP for the version with rigid Y-axis. The dynamic dis- cesses of whole work pieces in the design phase by the
placements for both axes are very small, considering the comparison of different design concepts.
high forces up to more than 50 kN (Y-axis) for an accel-
eration of 5 m/s. As stated already the stiffness of the
Y-drive for this version is not practical realisable. How- Acknowledgements
ever, it shows the importance of an as rigid as possible
feed-drive stiffness for HSC- and HPC- milling centres. The Cluster of Excellence Energy-Efficient Product
and Process Innovation in Production Engineering
(eniPROD) is funded by the European Union (Europe-
an Regional Development Fund) and the Free State of
Saxony.
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6. Summary and Outlook
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