Analysis of Zig-Zag Error in Gantry Type Machine

A large five-axis gantry-type machine performs cutting operations by moving the gantry, along with a bed. During operation, there are three sources of position (zig-zag) errors: 1) the position difference between two control motors on the X axis, 2) friction difference from the different column weights, and 3) torque of the rotating spindle. This study improved the performance of a gantry-type machine by analyzing these three error sources. We changed the mass of a column in the gantry structure and measured the effect on the friction result. We also studied the spindle torque influences on the movement performance of the gantry in relation to the spindle rotation.