Design and Development of a Thermal Error Compensator Based on CPS for CNC Machine Tools

Cyber-Physical System (CPS) is a combination of closely integrated physical processes, network and computation. It has been widely used in manufacturing because of its advantages in connecting cyber world and physical world. Computer numerical control (CNC) machine tools play a vital role in modern manufacturing, and their machining accuracy is greatly affected by thermal errors. In this paper, a thermal error compensator based on CPS for CNC machine tools is designed and developed. According to the requirements of a CPS, the compensator is developed on an embedded system, which can speedily collect data from sensors, precisely predict thermal errors, and effectively communicate with CNC system as well as cloud service platform. The compensator is applied in a heavy-duty CNC machine tool and the result shows that it produces intended effect in different machining conditions.