Development of an Ultra Precision Hydrostatic Guideway Driven by a Coreless Linear Motor

In order to develop the hydrostatic guideways driven by a coreless linear motor for ultra precision machine tools, a prototype of guideway is designed and tested. A coreless linear DC motor with a continuous force of 156 N and a laser scale with a resolution of 0.01 ㎛ are used in the system. Experimental analysis on the static stiffness, motion errors, positioning error and its repeatability, micro step response and velocity variation of the guideway are performed. The guideway shows infinite stiffness within 50 N applied load in the feed direction, and by the motion error compensation method using the Active Controlled Capillary, 0.08 ㎛ linear motion error and 0.1 arcsec angular motion error are acquired. The guideway also reveals 0.21 ㎛ positioning error and 0.09 ㎛ repeatability, and it shows stable responses following a 0.01 ㎛ resolution step command. The velocity variation of feeding system is less than 0.6%. From these results, it is estimated that the hydrostatic guideway driven by a core less linear motor is very useful for the ultra precision machine tools.