General Procedure for Servo-Axis Design in Multi-Degree-of-Freedom Machinery Subject to Mixed Loads

The motion performances of multi-axis machinery are strongly related to the proper design of the servo axes driving the actuated joints, which must fulfil motion requests in terms of speed and torque for the motion design task. Multi-degree-of-freedom machinery highlights, at the joint level, mixed-load conditions due to high dynamic movements and external working forces. Moreover, such systems have a dynamic coupling between the axes due to their mechanical configuration. This mixed-load condition makes the servo-axes design, whose result is the selection of the couple power drive system and transmission, not a trivial procedure. This paper proposes an extensive theoretical discussion that leads to a general procedure for the direct design of the servo axes of multi-degree-of-freedom machinery subject to a mixed-load condition and dynamic coupling between the mechanical joints. The proposed procedure starts with identifying the loads required on the actuated joints without distinguishing between the different contributions. Then, in a few steps, the methodology leads to the direct choice of the PDS/transmission units through a single graphical representation where the load’s peak, thermal and speed conditions are highlighted, along with the possible PDSs and transmissions. The graphical representation proposed also allows the easy and efficient analysis of the effect of transmission selection on the torque and speed margins. Finally, the paper presents the effectiveness of the proposed procedure, applied to the design of the servo axes of a linear delta robot.