Design and control of a dual-stage feed drive

High precision positioning over a large workspace is a fundamental feature of a precision machine. Connecting coarse (large stroke) and fine (high resolution) drive stages, in series, to form a dual-stage feed drive (DSFD) system can provide the desired performance. The DSFD concept has applications that include fast tool servos for the creation of asymmetric surfaces or online chatter suppression, and micro–macro robots for high precision assembly. This paper studies the design of DSFDs for machine tools. The design issues are discussed with special considerations for the dynamics and control of the two drive stages. Two DSFDs, single-axis and two-axis, are designed with piezoelectric actuators (PAs) for the fine stages and linear motors (LMs) for the coarse stages. Both feature flexures for frictionless precision motion that are designed to meet the static and dynamic requirements of a milling process. A model-based control algorithm ensures that the stages work together in a complementary fashion. The single-axis DSFD reduced the tracking error by about 75% in comparison to a similarly controlled LM drive. A second DSFD was built for milling experiments. In sinusoidal profile cutting the maximum tracking error was reduced by 83% and the average magnitude of the error was reduced by 63%. In sharp corner cutting the DSFD reduced the maximum tracking error by 38% and the average magnitude of the error by 39%.