Estimation of Three-Dimensional Volumetric Errors of Numerically Controlled Machine Tools by a Tracking Interferometer

This paper presents the estimation of three-dimensional volumetric errors of a machining center by using a tracking interferometer. A tracking interferometer is a laser interferometer with the mechanism to steer the laser direction to follow a target retroreflector. Based on the triangulation principle, the three-dimensional position of the target can be estimated from measured laser displacements. Its capability to measure three-dimensional positioning errors for arbitrary trajectories is important for the indirect measurement of the machine＇s kinematic model. This paper presents experimental investigation of the estimation accuracy of the multilateration-based measurement by a tracking interferometer. A tracking interferometer developed by a part of the authors is used in experiments. In the present experiment, the measured volume of target positions was 100 mm × 100 mm × 100 mm. The estimation accuracy of targets within this volume was not sufficiently high compared to the positioning error of the measured machine tool. The results of the experiment and simulation show that the estimation uncertainty is dependent on tracking interferometer locations relative to target locations. Error sensitivity analysis shows that wider distribution of tracker positions in XY improves the estimation accuracy.

Improved closed-loop tracking interferometer measurement for a five-axis machine tool with a bi-rotary milling head

Tracking interferometer based on bi-rotary milling head is a novel scheme to conduct volumetric accuracy measurement of a five-axis machine tool.The laser beam direction of the interferometer can be regulated to follow the retroreflector by moving the bi-rotary head.This is a low-cost implementation of multilateration measurement,and its measurement accuracy is mainly affected by the error motion of the rotary axes.This paper proposes an improved multilateration principle to identify the positionindependent geometric errors of rotary axis and laser beam,and minimize their impact on the measurement uncertainty.A closed-loop tracking interferometer system installed on the spindle is developed to perform the measurement with high tracking accuracy.The device can be installed on an ordinary five-axis machine tool without modifying the machine tool structure.The proposed scheme is conducive to improving the accuracy and practical application of the tracking interferometer based on birotary milling head.Experiments with the corresponding closed-loop tracking interferometer and uncertainty analysis are conducted to verify the performance of the proposed measurement scheme.

DESIGN AND ANALYSIS OF MULTI-MODE CLUSTER SAR

Cluster Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) system is composed of a group of spaceborne SAR systems. With its agility of combination, this system can work in several different modes. In this letter, the basic configuration and the working mode of the system are presented.The special performance of the system compared with the conventional SAR system is indicated.