Analysis and design of integrated control for multi-axis motion systems

In modern manufacturing, the design of multi-axis motion controllers for high-speed/high-precision and complex machining is becoming more critical. In the past, controllers for each axis were, in general, designed individually to obtain desirable tracking accuracy. Although some advanced motion control algorithms have been developed recently, they are mostly applicable to single-axis or biaxial systems. In particular, the design of two-axis integrated control, which includes: 1) feedback loops; 2) feedforward loops; and 3) the cross-coupled control (CCC), achieves significantly improved performance. However, its applications are limited to basic linear and circular contour commands for two-axis systems only. In this paper, system analysis for the multi-axis integrated control structure is proposed in order to achieve tracking and contouring accuracy simultaneously. With the derived contouring error transfer function (CETF), the integrated control design for multi-axis motion systems can be formulated simply as a single-input-single-output (SISO) design. Thus, a robust design with desirable performance for multi-axis motion systems can then be achieved straightforwardly. Moreover, by estimating the contouring error vector, the proposed multi-axis integrated control can be widely applied to general contour commands. Experimental results on a three-axis CNC machining center indicate that both tracking and contouring accuracy are simultaneously improved by applying the proposed control design.