Design of a Three-Axis Isotropic Parallel Manipulator for Machining Applications: The Orthoglide

摘要

The orthoglide is a 3-DOF parallel mechanism designed at IRCCyN for machiningapplications. It features three fixed parallel linear joints which are mountedorthogonally and a mobile platform which moves in the Cartesian x-y-z spacewith fixed orientation. The orthoglide has been designed as function of aprescribed Cartesian workspace with prescribed kinetostatic performances. Theinteresting features of the orthoglide are a regular Cartesian workspace shape,uniform performances in all directions and good compactness. A small-scaleprototype of the orthoglide under development is presented at the end of thispaper.