A non-iterative compensation method for machining errors of thin-walled parts considering coupling effect of tool-workpiece deformation

Thin-walled parts have significant application value in the aerospace industry due to their high strength-to-weight ratio. However, their low rigidity makes them susceptible to cutting force-induced error, which may seriously affect their machining accuracy. Error compensation is an effective method for addressing this issue. However, the commonly used mirror compensation method can cause residual errors due to the coupling effect of the tool-workpiece deformation. The influence mechanism of this coupling effect on error compensation is analyzed through an iterative compensation method. This method efficiently reduces residual errors. However, its computation efficiency is insufficient to meet the requirements of real-time compensation. Therefore, a non-iterative compensation method is proposed to directly calculate the compensation values considering the coupling effect of the tool-workpiece deformation. Through the approximate invariance of the overall cutting coefficient matrix and the pre-given system parameter, the proposed method avoids the repeated calculation of cutting forces and improves the computation efficiency. Experiment results of milling thin-walled blades show that after compensation using the proposed method, the machining accuracy of the thin-walled blade has seen a further increase of 18.1% in comparison to the mirror compensation method. Moreover, the proposed method achieves comparable compensation accuracy to the iterative method with a 66% reduction in computation time. The proposed method has significant potential for real-time compensation in the machining of complex 5-axis thin-walled parts. © 2024 The Author(s)