IJCAS

Micro milling requires both high speed and high accuracy in order to economically produce parts with features on the scale of 1 μm. Micro mills are smaller and more flexible than traditional large-scale machines. Therefore, vibration of the machine structure is a significant problem. Given that micro milling requires high positioning precision, even small vibrations in the controller dynamics are problematic. The small-scale operation has considerably lower tool/workpiece interaction forces than traditional-scale milling. These low cutting forces have minimal effect on the machine structural re-sponse. Therefore, the dominant dynamic factor in exciting vibration can be the machine tool motion, rather than the workpiece/tool interaction. Given this realization, properly shaping the motions of the micro mill is a promising approach to reduce vibration. This paper presents a nonlinear command-shaping technique to reduce the vibrations of a micro mill that can be implemented with a standard CNC controller. The robustness of this technique to modeling errors and disturbances is investigated. Theoretical proofs and experimental demonstrations of the command-shaping technique are presented. The improved performance from the command shaping enables higher throughput and improved accuracy of the micro mill.

Keywords: Command shaping, input shaping, micro-milling, vibration.