Feature Based Machine Tool Accuracy Analysis Method

Machine tool accuracy is the most important performance parameters which affect the part quality. At present, a systematic machine tool accuracy evaluation method is necessary for the machine tool selection in process planning and shop-floor scheduling. This paper proposes an efficient feature based machine tool accuracy analysis method to enable machine tool capability evaluation about accuracy, and the mapping from the machine tool accuracy to the part feature tolerance is established in this method. The cutter is used as a bridge to transform the machine tool error to feature tolerance. The deviation of the cutter between the actual position & orientation and the nominal position & orientation is converted from the machine tool error according to the rigid body kinematics method. Then the feature error in the form of GD&T is calculated from the profile of the feature and the deviation of the cutter. A prototype system has been developed based on this research. An industrial case study shows that the methodology is effective.