Systematic Geometric Error Modeling for Workspace Volumetric Calibration of a 5-axis Turbine Blade Grinding Machine

A systematic geometric model has been presented for calibration of a newly designed 5-axis turbine blade grinding machine. This machine is designed to serve a specific purpose to attain high accuracy and high efficiency grinding of turbine blades by eliminating the hand grinding process. Although its topology is RPPPR (P: prismatic; R: rotary), its design is quite distinct from the competitive machine tools. As error quantification is the only way to investigate, maintain and improve its accuracy, calibration is recommended for its performance assessment and acceptance testing. Systematic geometric error modeling technique is implemented and 52 position dependent and position independent errors are identified while considering the machine as five rigid bodies by eliminating the set-up errors of workpiece and cutting tool. 39 of them are found to have influential errors and are accommodated for finding the resultant effect between the cutting tool and the workpiece in workspace volume. Rigid body kinematics techniques and homogenous transformation matrices are used for error synthesis.