Lightweight Design Of Gantry Milling Chain Tool Magazine And Research Of ATC

As the key features of the milling machine, tool library and manipulator have provided important guarantee for reducing the non-cutting time, improving the production efficiency and lowing the manufacturing cost of parts. Therefore, how to ensure the precise, high-speed and reliable of tool change action is one of the most important center researches for gantry milling machining.The magazine body is the appropriate drive, chain organizations, as well as installation and magazine holder in the magazine bent. The magazine is also a major component debugging equipment and machine tools. The dynamic performance has a direct impact on positioning accuracy, stability and transfer efficiency in the process of tool change. To ensure the enough static stiffness and good dynamic characteristics can provide security for stability and efficiency of chain tool library. Automatic tool change is an important part auxiliary processing of machining, and the process control of ATC directly affects the efficiency and reliability of the machine.This paper completed the lightweight design of tool magazine and the expansion of tool change macro program, and also, the digital simulation of tool change process in a virtual simulation platform has been conducted. First,complete the selection of inertia cutter and calculated rotating parts, damping load, tool change time parameters and so on. The advantage of macro is that the variables can be analyzed to control the tool change process, it is more convenient to achieve recognition and reliable of the tool, shorten tool change time. After that, the simulation of tool change process was conducted in the VERICUT. And further improvement and optimization tool change were operated according to the results of simulation. Then a three-dimensional geometric modeling of the magazine body was created as well as the grid was divided, based on which, the situation of the magazine in different pre-stress was analyzed. Form the pre-stressed strength and stiffness analysis of tool magazine body. We can get the five modal parameters through the result of the analysis, and the optimization design of the tool magazine body was conducted based on the simulation results. At the same time, suggestion was put forward for the automatic tool change mechanical system design.In this paper, the research results can not only provide a reference for the improvement of tool change process and the structural optimization, but also could improve the reliability of the automatic tool changer.