Energy Saving for Gantry-Type Feed Drives by Synchronous and Contouring Control

Abstract

Because feed drives are widely used day and night in industrial applications such as machine tools and coordinated measuring machines all over the world, not only high-speed and high-precision control but also consumed energy saving is required. This paper presents a controller design to reduce consumed energy for gantry-type feed drives that consist of two linear actuators placed in parallel and one linear actuator placed perpendicular to the two parallel actuators. The proposed design is based on synchronous and contouring controllers. The synchronous controller has been studied for reducing synchronous error between two parallel actuators that causes significant mechanical damage, and the contouring controller has been developed for improving contouring performance, especially in machining applications. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed controller, which reduces consumed electrical energy by about 10%.