Research of design an educational modular 5 axis milling machine

Abstract

Industrial CNC machine tools are supplied as closed architecture systems. Their structure, kinematics and CNC controllers are designed to be used exclusively for their basic purpose, without any possibility of being changed. Reconfiguration is seen as the ability to add or remove modules from the machine, to be equipped with additional degrees of freedom (axes). For the concept to become a reality, it is necessary that the machine tool can be easily assembled and disassembled by an end-user and can adapt to changing projects or machining requirements. The approached of this research was to develop a 5-axis modular machine tool, with technological capabilities similar to industrial ones, at an affordable level of development costs and suitable to be used for teaching CAM techniques for future engineers.