Design and manufacturing of a 6 actuator hexapod CNC with parallel kinematics and its control

The hexapod structure, which has 6 actuators and parallel kinematic robot is also known as a Stewart Platform. Parallel systems have a higher rigidity and a lower mass moment of inertia than a serial systems designed to carry the same maximum load. Therefore, it is possible to use this system in many areas such as aircraft and vehicle simulators, high precision machine tools, machining centers and excavation machines. On the other hand, the working spaces of parallel mechanisms are narrow compared to serial mechanisms, they have limited orientation range and difficulties are encountered due to the parallelism of the mechanism in advanced kinematics calculation. Stewart Platform mechanism consists of 6 linear actuators in series and two platforms, one fixed and one movable. The movable and fixed platform is connected to each other by actuators at point 6. In this structure, where the linear actuators also function as a limb, the actuators are connected from one side to the fixed platform and from the other side to the mobile platform by spherical joints. In this thesis, the design, production and control of the experimental hexapod CNC system with 6 actuators was performed. The mechanical design, kinematics, and simulation of the robot are conducted in the computer environment with the Catia V5 CAD application. The structural analysis of the robot are calculated in the computer environment with the Ansys Workbench application. Mathematical expressions of forward and inverse kinematic formulas of the system have been extracted. Computer based control software was developed by modeling these mathematical expressions with Delphi and Python languages. With this software, the mechanism developed was tried to be controlled by computer. As a result, ISO G codes commonly used in the control of CNC machines in the industry are interpreted by means of the developed software and the control of the machine is provided. According to the data obtained, the definition of "fındık" point, which can better define working volume of multi-axis robots, was proposed, design improvements were provided, and the mutuality of the mathematical infrastructure with mechanical structure was investigated.