A new method to identify the position-independent geometric errors in the rotary axes of five-axis machine tools

Position-independent geometric errors (PIGEs), caused by assembly imperfection, affect the machine tool's accuracy. Moreover, the rotary axes of five-axis machine tools introduce more PIGEs during parts machining, hence, the need to identify them to improve the accuracy. However, the identification of rotary axes centerlines and the use of extension bars, using double ball bar (DBB), introduce additional setup errors and uncertainties during error measurements and sometimes make the process tedious. This work proposes a new method to identify the eight (8) PIGEs in the rotary axes of a five-axis machine tool with a tilting table. The homogeneous transformation matrix (HTM) was used to construct the relative motion matrix to the established coordinate systems and then deduced the error model. Three different DBB installation setups were employed for the identification of the PIGEs for both rotary axes using the planar test, the recorded DBB length data was substituted into the model to obtain the PIGEs. The results show that the proposed PIGEs identification method is accurate and can improve the accuracy of the five-axis machine tool effectively, and this method has some advantages over some existing methods of identification in terms of simplicity which shows a good improvement in the manufacturing industry.