Compensation of Thermo-elastic Machine Tool Deformation Based on Control internal Data

The thermo-elastic behaviour of machine tool structures leads to unwanted displacements at the tool centre point (TCP) and has a significant influence on the machining accuracy. In the past, therefore, numerous direct and indirect compensation methods were developed to reduce and/or compensate the thermo-elastic displacements. The paper describes a new indirect compensation approach which allows the abandonment of all additional sensors with the exception of one environmental temperature sensor. As input control internal data of the feed drives and the main spindle are used exclusively. The rotational speed and motor current values - the latter correlate to the drive torque - represent the thermal load parameters of the machine. A combination of first and second order time delay elements describes the displacement behaviour of the machine resulting from these load parameters. The parameters of the time delay elements are determined by a systematic calibration procedure. The resulting displacements are calculated online and superposed as offset-values for the correction of the respective axis positions. Practical experiments show that with this elementary method a reduction of the thermo-elastic displacements of more than 80 % of the initial value is possible.