Development of a 3 dof Parallel Kinematic Machine for an application in shoes manufacturing

ITIA-CNR has been investigating in the last years the peculiarities and potentialities of machines based on a Parallel Kinematic structure. Different physical prototypes have been built, but also design methodologies and software tools have been developed to support industrial companies willing to develop PK machines. This paper presents the development of an industrial prototype for light deburring in shoes manufacturing with three degrees of freedom based on a PK structure plus a wrist with two rotational dof. The analyses done on a Finite Element model of the machine are compared with that ones executed on kinematic and multi-body models.