Integrated Design and Manufacturing in Mechanical Engineering

Abstract

The subject of this paper is the isotropic design of a hybrid mechanism intended for three-axis machining applications. Parallel mechanisms are interesting alternative designs in this context. We compare machine-tool mechanism, with a hybrid serial parallel structure, of which we optimize the first two-axis subsystem, i.e. the table of the machine tool. The comparative study is conducted on the basis of a prescribed workspace and given kinetostatic performance. The two-degree-of-freedom mechanisms analyzed in this paper can be extended to three-axis machines by adding a third axis in series with the first two.