Thermal Error Measurement, Modeling and Compensation for Motorized Spindle and the Research on Compensation Effect Validation

The motorized spindle is a primate part of the machine tool and its thermal characteristics have great influence on the accuracy of the machine tools. The thermal errors of the spindle of a certain type of precision horizontal machining center were measured with PLC acquisition system. By multivariate linear regression method, the axial thermal error model was built. Online real-time error compensation was implemented by applying the FANUC 18i CNC system external machine coordinate system shift function. A verification method was proposed which include three steps: model validation, compensation validation and experimental machining verification. The accuracy of the model was 84.1%, 64.9% and 49.4% respectively. The quantitative analysis results showed the precision was effectively improved and the compensation method was reliable.