Milling machine identification

Looks like it could be a hexapod. I believe Ingersoll was working on this concept. I don't know if anything practical has come of it yet.

Ned Simmons

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As others have suggested, you saw a "hexapod". You can also search for "parallel kinematic mechanisms" for (typically) more technical info.

I saw an Okuma PKM at a machinery show a couple of years ago. I actually got to hang off the head (as a demonstration of its rigidity). The head was indeed solid. The feeling was similar to haging off a rock face - absolutly no movement.

Neat machine, and theory. See:

Robin

that was at the NIST machine shop for a few years. I missed seeing it there when I recently visited the NIST shop, as it is out on loan to another facility right now. There may be some more info at a NIST web site somewhere, probably in the IMD or MEL pages. Try

Doug Warner wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

As others have said it's a hexapod. Actually it's an octahedral hexapod. If you type that into Google you'll get a lot of hits and info. While the kinematics and stiffness of the machine are interesting, the design completly ignores Abbe's principal of measurement, which is fundamental in machine tool design. The net result is that hexapods are not very accurate, and AFAIK no builder has come up with a solution.

Honda Engineering built a horizontal machining center that used some of the concepts of a hexapod design. I saw it at the JIMTOF show in Japan. It has an M shaped frame with the spindle in the "V" in the middle of the "M". The machine was absurdly fast and mezmerising to watch.

The machine is hard to describe, so here's a link.

Scroll down to the bottom of the page. It's one of the fastest machines I've ever seen.

One of the advantages this machine has over a linear servo motor type machine is that this thing had plenty of power. But again, since the reference scales don't coincide with the axes, it's probably not very accurate without a lot of mapping. It would probably make one hell of a router though.

Here is a link to a site that discusses these and other machines and robots with this type of design.

Thanks. NIST looks like a fun place to visit, or work.. =20

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