Error Analysis of Three Degree-of-Freedom Changeable Parallel Measuring Mechanism

A three degree-of-freedom (DOF) planar changeable parallel mechanism is designed by means of control of different drive parameters. This mechanism possesses the characteristics of two kinds of parallel mechanism. Based on its topologic structure, a coordinate system for position analysis is set-up and the forward kinematic solutions are analyzed. It was found that the parallel mechanism is partially decoupled. The relationship between original errors and position-stance error of moving platform is built according to the complete differential-coefficient theory. Then we present a special example with theory values and errors to evaluate the error model, and numerical error solutions are gained. The investigations concentrating on mechanism errors and actuator errors show that the mechanism errors have more influences on the position-stance of the moving platform. It is demonstrated that improving manufacturing and assembly techniques can greatly reduce the moving platform error. The small change in position-stance error in different kinematic positions proves that the error-compensation of software can improve considerably the precision of parallel mechanism.