Thermal Error Modeling and Prediction of a Heavy Floor-Type Milling and Boring Machine Tool

Thermal error modeling and prediction of a heavy floor-type milling and boring machine tool was studied in this paper. An FEA model and a thermal network of the machine tool’s ram was established. The influence of boundary conditions on thermal error was studied to find out the boundary conditions that needn’t to be calculated precisely, reducing the time cost of the work. Superposition principle of heat sources was used in the FEA to get the simulation data of thermal error and temperature. A model based on the simulation data was established to predict the thermal error during the work process. An experiment was performed to verify the accuracy of the model. The result shows that the model accuracy is 87%. The method in this paper is expected to be used in engineering application.Copyright © 2015 by ASME