Unit-Iii Constructional Features of CNC Machines
Unit-Iii Constructional Features of CNC Machines
Unit-Iii Constructional Features of CNC Machines
Introduction:
The design and construction of CNC machines differs greatly from that of conventional
machine tools.
The difference arises from the requirement of highest machining accuracy and
performance level.
There are some common features for design of all the machines like cutting speed and
feed, gear boxes, constructional elements like slideways, beds, spindles.
Since CNC machines are operated automatically, the operator’s supervision is less and so
a careful design consideration is necessary to avoid very large damage.
Due to the following factors, CNC machines are subjected to unexpected deformation
1. High speed in CNC
2. More feed rate
3. More pressure of cutting tool on workpiece
4. Noise and vibration
5. Friction of slideways
6. Thermal deformation of machine parts
So the following factors should be considered for testing the performance of a CNC
machine.
1. Reliability of CNC
2. Production accuracy
3. Production rate
Linear transducer like ‘Ferranti’ systems is more accurate and widely accepted.
But nowadays, the rotary transducers like ‘Synchro’ systems are slowly getting accepted.
By analyzing different control systems, the designer can select the proper control system
according to the customer’s need and requirement.
The following are the design factors involved in the design of CNC machine structure.
1. Static load
2. Dynamic load
3. Thermal load
Static load
The static forces (static load) are exerted commonly by the weight of machine itself and
the forces due to cutting.
To keep the deformation of the structure due to static load within permissible limits, the
structure should have adequate stiffness and proper structural configurations.
The following figures show the basic configurations of CNC machine tool structure.
The inertia forces are also considered as dynamic loads which are exerted by rapid
acceleration and deceleration.
The dynamic loads (forces) are constantly changing forces acting on the structure, while
movement is taken place.
These dynamic forces make the CNC machine vibrates. The following are the factors
creating vibrations.
1. Unbalanced rotating and reciprocating parts.
2. Improper meshing of gears
3. Irregular alignment of bearings.
4. Interrupted cuts while machining (like in milling)
Dynamic load
Thermal load
In CNC machines, there are number of heat sources creating thermal gradients within the
machine. Some of these sources are
1. Electric motor
2. Friction due to mechanical drives and gear boxes.
3. Friction in bearings and slideways
4. Machining process
5. Temperature of surroundings
Due to these heat sources, the deformation takes place which will be the cause for
inaccuracy in machine performance.
The geometric relationship between slide and slideway determines -the geometric
accuracy of the CNC machine.
Kinematics accuracy of the CNC machine depends on the straightness, flatness and
parallelism errors in the slideway.
These errors become the cause for further tracking errors like pitch, yaw and roll errors,
which are difficult to measure and correct.
Further, over a period of time, some wear and tear takes place in the slideways which will
reduce the accuracy of slide motion resulting in errors in movement and positioning.
Apart from the above, the drive ‘mechanism should be placed in such a way that the
reaction force and resulting frictional forces are uniform in the slideways.
This will ensure uniform wear on slideways.
The following are important types of slideways (or) guide ways
1. Friction slideways
2. Antifriction linear motion (LM) slideways
3. Hydrostatic slideways
4: Aerostatic slideways
So, during starting of the slide, more force should be given to overcome the frictional
force.
This more force will deform the lead screw elastically:
The energy thus stored in the screw, together with the applied force makes the slide to
slip and move at faster rate.
When the speed of slide increases, the friction force decrease and hence slide moves
faster than intended. (Faster than desired speed).
This event may repeat itself and cause errors in positioning and consequently in a jerky
motion. This phenomenon is known as stick slip phenomenon.
Simply, the stick slip phenomenon prevents smooth starting of slide from rest.
To reduce the possibility of stick-slip, the coefficient of friction (R) between the contact
surfaces should be maintained minimum and constant.
Stick-slip can be overcome by using plastic inserts for slideways (or) rolling element
slides as shown in Fig.
Stick slip are overcome by attaching strips of material such as Poly Tetra Fluora Ethylene
(PTFE) (or) Turcite lining at the slideway interface.
There materials have a low and constant coefficient of friction (mu = 0.1).
After long duration, when the strips wear to a great extent, they will be replaced by new
strips to maintain accuracy.
The cross section of coated flat guidance, Dovetail guidance and Vee guidance are shown
in following figures.
The ‘V- or Inverted ‘V’ slideways are widely used on lathe beds.
The V guide is normally not much affected by wear, since there is a closing action as the
upper member settles on the lower member and this automatically maintain alignment.
Hence, jibs are not required jib is a tapered piece which is used to adjust the clearance
between the mating parts due to wear
Most of lathes have a combination of ‘V and flat guide ways to prevent twisting of the
slide as shown in the above Fig.
Provisions are made to prevent the carriage from lifting off the slideway.
Flat and Dovetail Slideways
The flat and dovetail slideways are mostly used in CNC machine tools.
The flat slideways have better load-bearing capabilities than other slide ways. Over a
period of time, the wear and tear occurs over the surfaces of slideways.
To reduce the excessive clearance caused by the wear, the tapered jibs are fitted in
between slide and slideway to ensure accuracy.
The slides and slideways are normally made up of cast iron. The cast iron may be heat
treated. It may be flame hardened, induction hardened (or) hardened surfaces will be
fastened on the surfaces.
Cylindrical guideways
In this guide ways, the bore in the carriage housing provides support to the guideway.
Cylindrical guideways are very efficient only for light loads and short traverses.
The disadvantage of these guideways is that the guide bar may sag (or) bend at the centre
of the span under a load when it is used for long transverse.
Disadvantage
These slideways have lower damping capacity
In this, a number of recirculating balls provide a rolling motion between the slider and
rail.
At the end of the block, there are end plates to ensure that the balls circulate through the
rolling tracks.
This system provides very high rigidity and very low friction for the movement of the
slide. Instead of balls, if rollers are provided then its name becomes Recirculating linear
roller bearings.
The rotary motion from the motor have to be converted into the linear motion to move the
various axes of the machine, tool.
In conventional machines lead screw and nut (or) the rack and pinion systems are used
for this purpose.
But in case of CNC machines, the recirculating ball screw-nut system is used to convert
the rotary motion into linear motion.
It is similar to replacement of simple journal bearing by ball bearings.
In recirculating ball screws, the nut is replaced by a series of balls.
These balls circulate in the channel in the form of threads.
So a highly efficient rolling motion of balls in the space between the screw shaft and nut
is obtained.
The balls at the end of the thread portion iii the nut will be returned to the beginning of
the thread form by a deflector.
There are two types of arrangements for returning the balls which are shown in
following figures (a) and (b)
In fig (a), the balls are returned through an external tube.
In this type, the balls at the end of the thread will be picked up by a return tube which
recirculates the balls to the beginning of the load zone by providing continuous rolling
motion.
In fig (b), the balls are returned to the start through a channel inside the nut.
Aerostatic slideways
In this type, the separates the slide and slide is raised on a cushion of compressed air
which entirely the slideway surfaces.
But this type is only used for positioning work such as Drilling, boring, and reaming
because of its lower stiffness.
Also, this type has drawback that there may be misalignment due to lifting of slides,
when uneven load is situated on the work table.
Spindle is used to
1. Center the workpiece (or) tool
2. Hold the workpiece (or) tool
3. To increase the stiffness and minimize the torsional strain on the spindles, they
are designed as stiff as possible. Also, the final drive to the spindle should be
located as near as possible to the bearings.
4. In case of lathe, when a chuck (work holding device) is mounted on the spindle,
the accuracy of rotation is important as it affects the roundness of the workpiece.
5. The rotational accuracy of the spindle is mostly dependent on the q design of the
bearings used and preloading
6. The accuracy and the quality, of the workpiece depends directly on the geometric
accuracy, running accuracy and stiffness of the spindle assembly.
7. The various types of spindle bearings used in the design of a spindle for CNC
machine tools are:
1. Hydrodynamic bearings
2. Hydrostatic bearings
3. Antifriction bearings
8. The work (or) toots carrying spindles are rotating at the order of 30-6000 rpm.
9. The main function of the drive is to cause motion to the spindle (or) slide to
execute motion commands issued by the CNC system. In CNC machines, the
metal is removed as a result of the movement of the workpiece and the cutting
tool as shown in following figure:
To maintain a constant metal removal rate, the spindle and tool movement to be
coordinated such that the spindle has a constant power and the - slide has a constant
torque.
In order to ensure a high degree of consistency in production, CNC machines are built up
with variable speed drives with higher control accuracies.
The electric motor for spindle drive and feed drive are shown in the following figures.
Note: Spindle drives require constant power and feed drives require constant torque. The
following are the requirements CNC spindle drives:
1. Excellent running smoothness
2. High rotational accuracy
3. Wide constant power band.
4. Fast dynamic response .-
5. High speed up to 9000-20000 pm
6. High load capacity
7. Compactness
Normally, the dc spindle drives are used in machine tools. However, with the availability
of microprocessor-based A/C frequency invertor, the ac drives are preferred since it and
be used for C axis applications for speed control in the range of 1:10, 00, 000 with
positioning.
Feed drives
A feed drive comprises of a feed servomotor and an electronic controller.
Speed motor has a constant torque. In continuous path (contouring) operations, several
feed drives have to Work simultaneously since the desired profile path has to be followed
continuously.
Brushless DC servomotors
In this type, the construction of iron cored motor is turned inside out:
Hence the rotor becomes a permanent magnet and the stator becomes a wound iron core.
Stepper motor
A stepper motor steps (rotates slowly) in- fixed angular increments. Step size (or) step
angle (or) angular increment is determined by the construction of the motor and the type
of drive system used to control it.
Normally the step angle is 1.80. i.e., 200 steps per revolution (step angle= 1.8°)
Nowadays, micro step motors are capable of giving angular increment of 0.0144° step
resolution.
Advantages of stepper motor -
1. Low cost
2. Ruggedness
3. Simplicity in construction -
4. High reliability
5. No maintenance.
Linear motors
Nowadays, most of the CNC machine tools use-the linear motors.
The linear motor consists of a series of magnets attached to the machine base and a set of
electrical coils plotted in a steel laminate core attached to the moving slide.
Machines built up with linear motors can produce parts with higher accuracy and close
tolerances at higher speeds and feeds.
Also, linear motors reduce the non machining time with high acceleration and
deceleration rates.
The grid plate in the form of rectangle with four parallel faces is called tombstone.
This is used for clamping multiple workpieces.
This fixture along with rotary table will be used as an indexing fixture for clamping more
workpieces in a single fixture.
Apart from the above, a large number of fixtures like angle blocks and base elements are
used to clamp the workpieces in position quickly.
The work holding devices should have following characteristics.
1. It should enable a number of operations on different faces in a single setting.
2. It should have a provision for removal of chins, burrs and swarf easily.
3. No interference should be given by it to the cutting tool during operation.
4. Incorrect loading of job should be eliminated by its design.
5. It should be sufficiently strong and rigid enough to withstand and transmit the cutting
forces.
6. There should be an arrangement for easy and quick loading and unloading of the
workpiece.
7. In should be safe for usage
8. It should firmly fix the component without yielding.
9. It should be able to adapt the automated loading or unloading the job.
10. It should be simple in construction.
To minimize the downtime in CNC machines, special work holding devices are designed.
These special work holding devices are known as Pallets.
That is why; CNC machines are also called Pallet machines.
In fully atomized CNC machine centre, Automated Pallet Changer (APC) is used.
In Fig. (b), the machined job comes to station 2. In fig (c), the next workpiece (in table 2)
is ready and workpiece in table 1 is ready for unloading.
Any number of jobs can be mounted in a line on the linear pallet shuttle.
Rotary Pallet
Rotary pallets are used for more flexible automated loading in CNC machines.
Three rotary pallets have four different stations depending upon the requirements shown
in fig.
The devices used for holding two types of tool loading devices.
1. Spindle Tooling
The tools are known as tool holding devices. There are
2. Flexible tooling
Tool holding Devices
Spindle Tooling
.
This spindle tooling is the type used for holding tools to perform milling, drilling, boring
and tapping operations.
The spindle tooling is shown in fig. Many number of spindle locations Sand variety of
cutting operations give it wide applications.
Some important types of spindle tooling are given in following figures.
1. Collet Chucks with extensions - These are used for, holding the end mills.
For storing large number of tools, the chain type tool magazine is used as shown in fig.
Normally the chain type magazine cOnsists of 16 to 24 tools and iii special cases, there
are more than 150 tools. The chain type magazines follow various types of paths
such as M type and rectangular type. /
Tool changing
In turret (a tool magazine for tuning operation), the tool changes are completed by
the turret indexing: But, in case of other tool magazines, the tool change arms are used
to transfer the tools. Normally, tool change time takes from 2 seconds to maximum 10
seconds. -
Tool change cycle
The tool is transferred from tool magazine to spindle and comes back to the tool
magazine after completion of one operation..This is known as tool change cycle. This
cycle consists of two stages namely,
(i) Tool selection stage
(ii) Tool Transfer stage
A common -type of tool change arm with double gripper for tool changing is shown
in Fig.
Tool selection stage
Once the tool selection command is received by the ATC, the selected tool comes to a
place known as tool change position. This completes the tool selection stage. Normally
the tool for next operation would be selected during previous operation.
Tool transfer stage -
The selected tool is transferred to the spindle from magazine while the previous tool (the
tool just finished the cutting operation) is transferred to the tool magazine from spindle.
Care should be taken so that the tool does not, hit the job.
FEED BACK DEVICES
Principle of operation
The device used for controlling the movement and sp*eed of axes is known as feed back
device. The closed loop system in CNC machines uses the feed back devices as shown in
Fig.
Transducers are üed for accomplishing the feed back functions. , For converting physical
quantities like speed, displacement etc into an electrical signal, the transducers are used. ,
The transducers ate usually analog (or) digital type depending on the signal generated by
them. An analog transducer will produce a continuous signals where the digital
transducer will generate discrete electrical pulses.
Types of Feed back devices
There are two type’s of feed kack devices
I Position feed back
(ii) Velocity feed back
Positioning feed back devices
Positioning feed back devices (Transducers) are used to measure the displacement
of the position of the slide (or) table and send the signals to the comparator to correct the
position.
Linear Transducers
This transducers measure the, position of slide directly. A simple. linear transducer. is
shown in figure.
In this, a contactor slide Is sliding over a potentiometer while the machine slide is
moving. The machine slide and contactor slide are attached together. So if the machine
slide moves, then the contactOr slide will also move.
Depending on the various position of the contactor slide, the voltage in the potentiometer
will vary (since the length of resistance attained by the contactor slider varies).
Since any transmission elements like gear train are not provided in this system, the error
due to transmission is eliminated.
Glass scales with line grating
It is a linear scale transducer fixed to the machine tool structure for direct position
measurement. In this, there is a finely, graduated scale (grating) made of glass which
provides a measuring surface along with a scanning unit. The grating is fixed. to the
stationary part of. the machine tool while scanning unit is fixed to the moving part.
So. Number represented by the dark patches (at the arrow shown in fig)
=32+8+2+1=43
A binary code scales
Inducto syn
This system is shown in fig.
This system has, two parts namely scale and slider. The scale is similar to rotor and the
slider is similar to stator winding. They have coils in the fOrm of hair pin turns etched on
to glass, steel or aluminium plates. The coils are bonded to the scale over an insulating
layer.
When two different voltages are applied with these ‘two sliding coils, a corresponding
emf is induced. This emi is directly proportional to the position of slider with respect to
scale.
Rotary transducer (Angular position measuring transducer)
This feed back device measures the angular position of the lead screw for measuring
the position of machine slide. It is an indirect method. The gear train ratio will be useful
for calculating the displacement of machine’ slide by measuring angular position of lead
screw. -
There are two types of rotary transducers
1. Encoders 2. ‘Resolvers
Encoders: Absolute Encoder,
The encoders are further clagsified into absoluie encoder and incr encoder.
The absolute encoder ‘providErs exact rotational position of the shaft whereas the
incremental encoder gives relative position of the shaft in term digital pulses. This
encoder consists of a glass disc with a number of accurately etched equi4istant ‘slots
along the periphery. , ‘ ‘
The outermost track has a equivalent value 1. (ie 20 ‘= 1). Similarly, other consecutive
tracks have the values. ‘ ‘ ‘ –
The encoder disk of an incremental encoder consists of one track and two sensors
shown in fig. (a). The outputs of these encoders are called chanínel A and channel B as
shown in fig (b). When the shaft rotates, the pulse trains occur on these channels with a
frequency proportional to the rotational speed. The waves are formed with a 90° phase
difference. These signals are fed to comparator which determines the magnitude and sign
of error.
The incremental encoder provides more
compared to the absolute encoder.
screw
The encoder is directly mounted
as shown in fig.
resolution (more accurate) at lower c6st
on the servomotor shaft (or) at the end of lead
The actual distance moved by the machine slide table is calculated from motion by
knowing lead (lead = pitch x no. of start) of the lead screw.
Resolver:
the rotary
The resolver consists of stator and rotor windings which are mounted at right angles to
each other as shown in fig. It has similar construction features as small ac motor.
In a resolver, Ihe output signal as a function of rotating is obtained by inductive coupling
between the stator and rotor. If an ac voltage is applied to one of the stator coils, a
maximum voltage will appear at a rotor coil, when these two coils are in line arid the
voltage will disappear for ±90 shift.
When the shaft is rotated, the induced voltage in one rotor coil follows a sine curve and
the voltage induced in the othei follows a cosine curve. So the phase- angle depends on
the angular position of the rotor shaft. Hence for example, if the rotor is rotated 90 –
This assembly consists of cutting tool (end mill), the adopter to hold the, spindle taper, a
collet for.. holding the straight shank qf the end mill and a retension knob used
by hydraulic draw bar in the spindle housing for retaining or releasing the tool from the
spindle. There are number of shapes of the adopter depending . oh the ma tool standard
followed by the machine builder.
Tool presetting
The CNC part programming takes care of generation of actual profile of component.
These profile is coordinated through which the cutting tool tip moves. So it is important
to know the actual dimensions of the tool when it is placed in the spindle.
The actual point to be programmed in, CNC part program is the tip of the tool.
Therefore it is .necessary to know precisely the deviation of the tool tip from the actual
position. To. make the tool place in an exact position with respect to a reference point
(gauge point) ‘tool setting device’ is used. A simple tool setting device is shown in fig.
In this device, the base of the spindle is provides with exact taper as used in the actual
machine tool. The cutting tool is pl’aced in the spiftdle taper. Micrometer is used to
measure and align the position of the tip of tool. The micrometer is attached to a ‘U’
clamp.
The ‘U’ clamp can be vertically moved and rotated about the post. The post has number
of location slots which are separated by equal distance (e.g. 30, mm). Therefore, the
length of the tool can be measured by the measurement of the micrometer plus the, slots
length (30 mm) along the post.
A similar tool setting device which can measure length as well aè the diameter of a
spin4le tooling are available in CNC tooling system. In the CNC turning, centre, an
integral tool setting devices are provided by many tool manufacturers.