Kinematic quasi-static errors evaluation through performance test for tilting-rotary table five axis machine tool

In order to grant tight geometric tolerances in milling process, machine tools are commonly subject to standardized tests to evaluate their overall accuracy performances. These tests are time consuming and need a production stop, therefore the idea of this paper is to propose an easy-to-use and time efficient standard machining test able to identify the sources of geometrical errors thanks to the indirect measurement of a finished test work piece. This test can be performed as a periodical checkup or in case of production re-start test. The idea to have a performance test is not new for three axis milling machines but, because of the different architectures of five-axis milling machines, this must be designed specifically and could be hardly generalized. The main goal of this study is to develop a kinematic model able to correlate the work-piece geometrical errors to the geometric and kinematic errors of each axis of the machine tool and to define a specific test that could highlight these contributions. The problem is that most of the proposed tests are not able to discriminate individually each source of error of the machine. The advantage of the performance test developed is the ability to decouple the geometrical axis errors using the analytical modeling. The validation of this approach has been carried out thanks to the development of a simulation multibody model and the comparison of the simulated and experimentally measured profile of the NAS 979 standard five axis contouring cone frustum profile.