Virtual prototyping of parallel mechanisms

Industrial adoption of parallel kinematics machines (PKM) may be eased by the availability of methodologies and integrated tools able to analyze in a short time PKMs of any architecture, providing the key data needed to design the machine. The proposed Virtual Prototyping environment answers to these requirements, quickly estimating not only the reachable workspace, and the kineto-static behavior, but also the actuators’ effort, internal loads in the mechanical structure and the effects of lumped structural compliances and of manufacturing/assembling errors. A description of the developed VPE-PKM, based on a commercial Multi-body package, is given. Its effectiveness is shown presenting results obtained by ITIA-CNR during the design of a 3 dof translational PKM for light deburring operations, and comparing them with experimental data.