Generation Mechanism of Quadrant Glitches and Compensation for it in Feed Drive Systems of NC Machine Tools

Circular motion tests are commonly used to evaluate the accuracy of the motion of feed drive systems. However, large quadrant glitches are often observed in circular trajectories as the motion changes across the x and y quadrants. It is well known that this phenomenon is caused by friction forces acting on the feed drive mechanism. This paper investigates the generation process of quadrant glitches and proposes a quadrant glitch compensator based on the investigation. As a result of the experiments and simulations, it is clarified that the axis velocity does not stay at zero during direction changes and that the proposed generation mechanism model for quadrant glitches accurately describes actual behavior. It is also confirmed that the proposed friction compensator can eliminate quadrant glitches effectively even if the radius and feed rate change.