Rotary Table
Rotary Table
Rotary Table
Development Report:
Seisakusho Co.,
2290, Honjo Kikugawa, Shizuoka 439-0018, Japan
E-mail: muditha d@szk.sankyo-seisakusho.co.jp
The high performance rotary tables are immense necessary part for the multi-axis machines. These rotary
tables are yet in the developing stage. In this report, a
rotary table driven by roller drive is introduced and
the characteristics of that are discussed by comparing them with the characteristics of rotary table driven
by worm gear mechanism. As the characteristics, the
positioning accuracy and repeatability, frequency response, rotational uctuations and inuence of unbalance mass on motion are measured. According to the
measured results, it can be said that the rotary table
driven by roller drive shows high performances and
therefore it can be said that this type of rotary tables
are well suited for machine tool applications.
Fig. 1. Driving mechanism.
Keywords:
backlash
1. Introduction
Now a day, manufacturing oors have been ooded
with multi-axis machining centers to fulll the demand of
productivity and also relaying cry of accuracy of the products. The product accuracy mainly depends on the motion
accuracy of the parts which used to assemble the machine
tools. Multi-axis machines consist of linear and rotary
axes. These rotary axes are yet in the developing stage
[1]. The accessory manufacturers pay their fullest effort
to introduce high performance rotary axes to machine tool
industry. When concerning the rotary axis, there are number of features [2, 3] such as, backlash, rotational uctuation, stiffness, and etc affect on the motion accuracy.
This report explains about the conguration of rotary
table driven by roller drive [4] and why it shows the better
performances. Furthermore, the performances of the rotary table driven by roller drive are discussed by comparing them with the performances of the rotary table driven
by worm gear mechanism. It is found from the results that
the rotary table driven by roller drive shows the better performances and hence it can be said that this table is well
suited to the machine tool applications.
3. Available Sizes
Rotary tables with roller drives are available in a wide
range of sizes, with diameters from smaller than 100 mm
to greater than 1500 mm and also different types such as
single rotary axis, rotary table with tilting axis, customize
products, and etc as depicted in Fig. 4. This enables the
machine designers a wide range of physical rotary table
sizes and types to satisfy the requirements of the given
application.
4. Measured Characteristics
In order to evaluate the systems, the characteristics of
rotary table driven by roller drive and another same size
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conventional rotary table driven by worm gear were measured. The experimental setup is depicted in Fig. 5. As
illustrated, it consists of four units that are table with rotary encoder, servo motor, servo amplier, and personal
computer with DSP board. A high resolution encoder
(0.0001) was used in order to reduce the measurement
errors which directly affect to the performance of rotary
table. For both the tables, the feed back units, motor, amplier, and controller were set same to avoid any interference to the measuring data.
low damping of rotary table causes various effects on machining, such as chattering etc. The measured results are
illustrated in Fig. 7. As according to gure, it can be
found that there are two natural frequencies for each table. The natural frequencies of the table driven by worm
gear mechanism are 230 Hz and 280 Hz and that of rotary
table driven by roller drive are 270 Hz and 430 Hz. From
the results it can be seen that the natural frequencies of
rotary table driven by roller drive are higher than that of
the table driven by worm gear mechanism.
ror of meshing units and uneven contacts between meshing units. The measured results are illustrated in Fig. 8.
As in the gure, rotational uctuations of worm gear
mechanism can be clearly identied and that cannot be
signicantly identied in roller drive mechanism. And
also backlash of worm gear mechanism can be clearly
seen in Fig. 8 (a) as it is appearing in between the CW
and CCW paths.
while the rotary table driven by roller drive is not inuenced. This is due to the backlash of the drive mechanism.
5. Summary of Results
The results can be summarized as in Table 1. According to the table, it can be said that the performances of rotary table driven by roller drive are signicantly good and
therefore it can be said that the rotary table with roller
drive mechanism elevates the accuracy level of the machine tools.
6.1. Case Study Precision Five-Axis Milling Machine (Courtesy of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. Japan- Data Used in This Section
was Extracted from Reference [7])
High precision micro-milling machines are necessary
for machining precision moulds, and etc. As explained
throughout the report, to build these machines, high precision rotary table is an immense necessary unit. Fig. 11
shows a micro-milling machine ( V1) [7] with tilting rotary table in which both rotary axes are driven by roller
drive and controlled in full-closed loop condition.
The machining test that employs a corn-frustum specied by NAS 979 standard [6] and positioning accuracy
and repeatability test which is specied in ISO 230-2 [5]
were conducted to illustrate the performance of the ma346
chine. Fig. 12 shows the setup of work-piece and machining of corn-frustum. Table 2 gives the conditions that
used in the cutting test. Table 3 shows the results of positing accuracy and repeatability test. Fig. 13 shows the results of corn-frustum test. As according to results it can be
said that the accuracy level of the machine is signicantly
high.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to express his gratitude to Mr. Hiroyuki
WAKAMOTO (Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. Japan) for the
support and corporation.
References:
[1] W. T. Lei, M. P. Sung, W. L. Liu, and Y. C. Chuang, Double ballbar test for the rotary axes of ve-axis CNC machine tools, International Journal of Machine Tool and Manufacturing, Vol.47, pp.
273-285, 2007.
[2] K. M. M. Dassanayake, M. Tsutsumi, K. Higashiyama, and Ken
Yamamoto,An approach to estimate the inherent deviations by
means of simultaneous ve-axis motion, Proceedings of The International Conference on Leading Edge Manufacturing in 21st Century, (Fukuoka, Japan), 2007.
[3] K. M. M. Dassanayake, M. Tsutsumi, Ryuta Sato, and Hisayoshi
Ito, Motion characteristics of high performance rotary tables for
CNC machines, Proceedings of IMECE2008, ASME International
Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition, (Boston, Massachusetts, USA), 2008.
[4] http://www.rollerdrive.jp
[5] ISO 230-2, Test code for machine tools Part 2: Determination
of accuracy and repeatability of positioning numerically controlled
axes, 1997-E.
[6] NAS 979, Uniform cutting test NAS series, metal cutting equipment specication, pp. 34-37, 1969.
[7] H. Wakamoto, T. Wakana, and T. Kubozono, Technologies of highprecision 5-axis machine V1-5X and machining examples, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd., Technical Review Vol.45, No.3, pp.
39-42, September 2008.
Name:
Masaomi Tsutsumi
Afliation:
Professor, Research Institute of Symbiotic Science & Technology, Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology
Address:
2-24-16 Nakacho, Koganei, Tokyo 184-8588, Japan
Main Works:
Name:
K. M. Muditha Dassanayake
Afliation:
Project Leader, R&D Group, Sankyo Seisakusho
Co.
Address:
2290 Honjo, Kikugawa, Shizuoka 439-0018, Japan
Main Works:
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