Abstract
A miniaturized machine tool-referred to as Micro/Meso-Scale Machine Tool (mMT)-is studied by the characterization of structural dynamics in this paper. The scaling effect of the dynamics of machine structures of a conventional machine tool and the prototype of a mMT is investigated through the finite element analysis (FEA) and the experimental modal analysis. The results of experimental modal analysis reveal that the fundamental natural frequency of the prototype of mMT (148.6 Hz) is much lower than that obtained by the dynamic scaling analysis via FEA (250 Hz approximately). The effect of joint conditions between machine components on the dynamic behaviors of the machine structure is shown to be a significant factor.
