英语原文：
Integrated Machine and Control Design
Abstract—In this paper, we describe    a systematic design procedure for reconfigurable machine tools and their associated control systems. The starting point for the design is a set of operations that must be performed on a given part or part family. These operations are decomposed into a set of functions that the machine must perform and the functions are mapped to machine modules, each of which has an associated machine control module. Once the machine is constructed from a set of modules, the machine control modules are connected. An operation sequence control mod ule, user interface control module, and mode-switching logic complete the control design. The integration of the machine and control design and the reconfigurability of the resulting machine tool are described in detail.
I. Introductionextensive翻译
In today’s competitive markets, manufacturing systems must quickly respond to changing customer demands and diminishing product life cycles. Traditional transfer lines are designed for high volume production, operate in a fixed automation paradigm, and therefore cannot readily accommodate changes in the product design. On the other hand, conventional CNC-based “flexible” manufacturing system offer
generalized flexibility but are generally slow and expensive since they are not optimized for any particular product or a family of products.
An effort at the University of Michigan aims to develop the theory and enabling technology for reconfigurable machining systems. Instead of building a machining system from scratch each time a new part is needed, an existing system can be reconfigured to produce the new part. In this paper, we describe how an integrated machine and control design strategy can result in machine tools which can be quickly and easily configured and reconfigured.
In order to provide exactly the functionality and capacity needed to process a family of parts, RMTs are designed around a given family of parts. Given a set of operations to be performed, RMTs can be configured by assembling appropriate machine modules. Each active module in the library has a control module associated with it. As the mechanical modules are assembled, the control modules will be connected and the machine will be ready to operate. Extensive and time-consuming specialized control system design will not be required. Section II describes how the machine is designed from a set of basic machine modules,
This research was supported in part by the NSF-ERC connected in a well-defined fashion, and Section
III describes how the control is similarly assembled from a library of control modules. This modular construction of the machine and control allows for
many levels of reconfigurability as described in Section IV. The paper concludes with a description of future work in Section V.
II. Machine Design
Ongoing work on manufacturing system configuration at the University of Michigan addresses the problem of starting from a part (or part family) description and extracting the machining operations necessary to produce the part(s). The operations are grouped according to tolerance, order of execution, and desired cycle time of the system, with the intention that each operation “cluster” can be produced on a single machine tool. The operation cluster considered here is to drill a set of holes for the cam tower caps on V6 and V8 cylinder heads shown in Figure 1. The input to the reconfigurable machine tool design procedure is the cutter location data generated by a process planner for this operation cluster. data includes positioning and drilling information.
The RMT design procedure consists of three main stages: task clarification, module selection, and evaluation. After a brief literature review, these three stages will be outlined in this section.
A. Related research
Since reconfigurability is a relatively new concept in ma chining systems, there is little, if any, published literature on the design of reconfigurable machine tools. However, modular machine tools have been on the market for several years, and some of the published articles on modular robots, modular machines and assembly do have some rel-evance to the design of reconfigurable machine tools. For example, Shinno and Ito proposed a methodology for generating the structural configuration of machine tools. They decomposed the machine tool structures into simple geometric forms: e.g. boxes, cylinders, etc. Yan and Chen [21], [1] extended this work to the ma chining center structural design. [12] adapted Ito’s method for modular machine t ool synthesis and de-veloped a method for enumerating machine tool modules. Paradis and Khosla [15] determined the modular assembly configuration which is optimally suited to perform a specific task. On the systems front, Rogers and Bottaci [16] discussed the significance of reconfigurable manufacturing systems, and Owen et al. [13] developed a modular reconfigurable manufacturing system synthesis program for educational pur poses.
In our work, traditional methods of motion representation and topology (i.e. screw theory, graph theory, etc.) are employed to capture the characteristics of RMTs. These mathematical schemes are used for t
opological synthesis, function-decomposition, and mapping procedures; details can be found in [9].
Figure 1
B.Task clarification
The design of an RMT begins with task clarification, which entails analyzing the cutter location data to determine the set of functions which are necessary to accomplish the desired kinematic motions. There are three steps. First, graphs are generated which abstractly representation
Fig. 3. High-level operation sequence, showing causal dependencies and concurrencies.
This abstract representation of the sequence of operations is derived from the CL data, and will be used to design the sequencing control the motions. These graphs are then decomposed into functions, and finally the functions are mapped onto machine modules which exist in the library.
A graph representation of the machine tool structure allows for systematic enumeration of alternate configurations and also provides a method of identification of nonisomorphic graphs. The graph repres
entation is also used for bookkeeping to assign machine modules to the graph elements. A graph consists of a set of vertices connected together by edges. In using a graph as an abstract represen tation of a machine tool structure, we define two different types of vertices: type 0 and type 1. A vertex represents a physical object with two ports; each port represents the location on the object where it can be attached to a neighboring object. A type 0 vertex has input and output ports that are in-line with respect to each other, whereas a type 1 vertex has input and output ports that are perpendicular to each other. Machining tasks are also classified as type 0 or type 1, depending on whether the tool is parallel or per pendicular to the workpiece.
C. Module selection
Commercially available modules are selected from the module library for each of
the functions (structural as well as kinematic) that were mapped to the graph in the task clarification stage. The data stored for each module in the library includes the homogenous transformation matrix representing its kinematic or structural function, the twist vector supplemented by range of motion information, a compliance matrix representing the module stiffness, module connectivity information, and power requirements (for active modules such as spindles and slides).
The first step in module selection is to compare the homogeneous transformation matrices of the modules with the task requirement matrix such that when appropriate modules are selected to meet the task requirements, the product of all module matrices should be equal to the desired task matrix: T = T1· T2 · · · Tn. Again, there may be many possible choices of modules for a given structural configuration. Figure 6 shows how different slides, spindles, and structural elements can be assembled according to the graph of Figure 4.
A slide module, with its CAD model and transformation matrix, is shown in Figure
7. It is capable of one direction of linear motion, indicated by the ~1 variable in its transformation matrix. Its database entry, shown in Table I, stores not only its transformation matrix but also the manufacturer name, model number, initial position, power level, and motion data. The twist vector is augmented by information on the minimum, initial, and maximum displacement of the module.
TABLE I
Database information and documentation for the machine
module shown in Figure 7.
(a) V6 machine (b) V8 machine
Fig. 2. Reconfigurable machine tool designs for the two different parts.
D. Evaluation
Once a set of kinematically-feasible modules have been selected, the resulting machine design must be evaluated. The criteria for evaluation of the reconfigurable machine tools synthesized by the above systematic procedure include the work envelope, the number of degrees of freedom, the number of modules used, and the dynamic stiffness.
The number of kinematic degrees of freedom of the machine tool must be kept to a minimum required to meet the requirements, both to reduce the actuation power and minimize the chain of errors. Machine tool designs which are generated using this methodology for the example parts of Figure 1 are shown in Figure 8.
The resulting designs must be evaluated with respect to the expec ted accuracy. The stiffness of the entire machine tool, one of the most important factors in performance, is estimated based on the module compliance matrices and the connection method.
III. Control Design
As the machine is built from modular elements, so is the control. In this work, we focus on the logic control for sequencing and coordination of the machine modules; a discrete-event system formalism is used [6]. There is one control module associated with each active machine module; we refer to these as machine control modules. In the machine design, there are passive elements which connect the active elements together. In the control design, there must also be“glue” modules which connect the machine control modules. The overall architecture of the control system for an RMT is shown in Figure 9.The structure is similar for either of the two machines shown in Figure 8; for the V8 machine, there is no Y -axis control module. As shown, the machine control modules are at the lowest level; these interact directly with the mechanical system. Three modules handle the mode switching logic. In this section, we briefly describe each of these types of control modules as well as their interaction and coordina tion.

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