Research Article A Comparison Study on the Orientation Capability and Parasitic Motions of Two Novel Articulated Tool Heads with Parallel Kinematics

Copyright © 2013 Fugui Xie et al.This is an open access article distributed under theCreativeCommonsAttribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. This paper proposes two novel articulated tool heads based on three degree-of-freedom (DoF) parallel kinematic mechanisms (PKMs). They can realize one translation and the A/B-axis (rotations about the x- and y-axes) linkage movements. Both of the proposed tool heads can be used as modular machining units in five-axis machine centers. Based on the proposed configurations, the performance comparison on orientation capability and parasitic motions is carried out to provide theoretical foundation for the design of a five-axis hybridmachine. In this process, themotion/force transmissibility is taken into consideration and the orientation capability is investigated by using local transmission index (LTI) as the evaluation criterion. To get better orientation performance of the selected configuration, kinematic optimization is carried out and a geometric deviation parameter is brought into the already established configuration. Consequently, the orientation capability of more than fifty degrees is achieved. The proposition of the tool heads and the corresponding comparison and optimization are very helpful for the development of the new hybrid machine tool. 1