Actualities and Development of Heavy-Duty CNC Machine Tool Thermal Error Monitoring Technology

Abstract

Thermal error monitoring technology is the key technological support to solve the thermal error problem of heavy-duty CNC (computer numerical control) machine tools. Currently, there are many review literatures introducing the thermal error research of CNC machine tools, but those mainly focus on the thermal issues in small and medium-sized CNC machine tools and seldom introduce thermal error monitoring technologies. This paper gives an overview of the research on the thermal error of CNC machine tools and emphasizes the study of thermal error of the heavy-duty CNC machine tool in three areas. These areas are the causes of thermal error of heavy-duty CNC machine tool and the issues with the temperature monitoring technology and thermal deformation monitoring technology. A new optical measurement technology called the “fiber Bragg grating (FBG) distributed sensing technology” for heavy-duty CNC machine tools is introduced in detail. This technology forms an intelligent sensing and monitoring system for heavy-duty CNC machine tools. This paper fills in the blank of this kind of review articles to guide the development of this industry field and opens up new areas of research on the heavy-duty CNC machine tool thermal error.