Kinematics and dynamics analysis of the 3PUS-PRU parallel mechanism module designed for a novel 6-DOF gantry hybrid machine tool

A hybrid kinematic machine (HKM) tool with the respective advantages of serial and parallel mechanism is a significant direction for the innovation and development of current advanced sophisticated manufacturing equipment. This paper considers the configuration design, kinematics analysis and dynamics analysis of a 1-translational-3-rotational (1T3R) parallel manipulator, which acts as the main movement module of a novel 6-DOF reconfigurable HKM. The key parallel manipulator with 4 DOFs is composed of one middle PRU kinematic chain and three identical PUS kinematic chains. First, complete kinematics characteristics, including position, velocity, acceleration and jerk, are deeply analyzed by a vector analysis approach. Reachable position workspace and orientation workspace were derived through the workspace boundary search method. Furthermore, complete inverse dynamics model of the 3PUS-PRU parallel manipulator was formulated by virtue of the virtual work principle with considering the inertial and gravitational properties of struts. Finally, a driving power and energy consumption model of each actuated motor under the prescribed trajectory were obtained, resulting in the decouple contribution of each motion part correspondingly. This systematic and rigorous methodology aims at laying a solid theoretical and technical foundation for configuration design and performance analysis of this homologous type HKM.