A New Type of Controllable Mechanical Press: Motion Control and Experiment Validation

This paper is the second part of our study on designing a new type of metal forming press. In the first part of the study (Du, R., and Guo, W. Z., 2003, ASME J. Mech. Des., 125(3), pp. 582–592), a new controllable mechanical press is introduced that consists of a large constant-speed motor (CSM) and a small variable-speed servomotor (VSM). The CSM provides up to 80% of the power while the VSM tunes the motion of the ram. This new design has a number of advantages: it is flexible (i.e., its ram motion is programable), fast (its speed is limited only by the mechanical motion), and energy efficient (the CSM can use a large flywheel to ease the large instantaneous metal forming force). This paper focuses on the motion control and experiment validation. First, the inverse kinematics is presented, which gives the relationship between the ram travel and (i) the input angular displacements, velocities, and accelerations of the two motors. Next, a trajectory-planning method is given. Then, the sensitivity analysis is carried out, which helps to determine the key dimensions of the press and the error compensation scheme. Finally, two experiments are shown to demonstrate that the new press can accomplish different tasks.