Accuracy analysis for machine tool spindles considering full parallel connections and form errors based on skin model shapes

Abstract The rotation accuracy of a machine tool spindle is essential for ensuring the machining precision. Due to the existence of manufacturing and assembly errors, the rotation accuracy of the spindle will be inevitably impacted and degraded. Therefore, to reduce the influence of the errors and improve the work performance, this paper focuses on accuracy analysis for the spindle and a novel optimization-oriented skin model shape method to tackle this highly complex problem. First, a structural analysis of the spindle is carried out to elaborate the intractable full parallel collections in the assembly. Then, based on the iterative closest point method, the deviation propagation of the spindle considering complex full parallel collections is transformed into an optimization problem, in which the skin model shapes and small displacement torsor are utilized to represent the form and pose errors of the part, respectively. By solving the optimization problem, assembly accuracy analysis for the spindle in terms of full parallel connections and form errors is accordingly achieved. On this basis, the tolerance analysis model of the spindle is also comprehensively established by employing the corresponding error simulation. Finally, measurement experiments are conducted to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method. The experiments show the predicted rotation runout and tolerance magnitude are close to the testing results, therefore indicating the proposed method can provide effective accuracy analysis for spindles.