Applying rapid heating for controlling thermal displacement of CNC lathe

Thermal error always exists in a machine tool and accounts for a large part of the total error in the machine. Thermal displacement in X-axis on a CNC lathe controlled based on a rapid heating system is presented in this paper. Positive Temperature Coefficient (PTC) heating plates are installed on the X-axis of the machine. A control temperature system is constructed for rapid heating which further helps the thermal displacement to quickly reach stability. The system then continuously maintains stable compensation of the thermal error. The presented rapid heating technique is simpler than the compensation of machine thermal errors by interference in the numerical control system. Results show that the steady state of the thermal displacement in the X-axis can be acquired in a shorter time. In addition, thermal errors in constant and varying working conditions could be significantly reduced above 80% and 60%, respectively, compared to those without using the rapid heating. Therefore, the proposed method has a high potential for application on the CNC lathe machine for improving its precision.