RECONFIGURATION CAPABILITIES OF SINGLE-PURPOSE MACHINE TOOLS BASED ON PARALLEL KINEMATIC STRUCTURES

摘要

Diminishing batch sizes, reduced series periods and a rising part variety require an increased flexibility and higher productivity in the machine tool industry. One solution to reconcile these needs are reconfigurable machining systems. With its modularity, convertibility, integrability and customization parallel kinematic based machine systems have the best preconditions to fulfill these attributes. Geometrical and material parameters of the workpieces in the process chain on the one hand and optimized machine structures on the other hand require qualified methods to develop reconfigurable machine tools. The task was to generate potential full parallel structures, to find a general description method and to keep the level of simulation work down. Parameters like the number of guide chains and the total of systems/joints degree of freedom were the basis for the investigations. The optimization of parallel link structures is represented by a multi-criterion optimization task only hardly to be solved by conventional optimization algorithms. The authors introduce an optimization structure based on Genetic Algorithms which presents one way to increase the efficiency in conception and design of parallel structured machine tools.