Abstract: In order to solve the profile control problem for the cam grinding system on the basis of analyzing the contour error, the control scheme that combines tangential-contouring control with position tracking compensation was proposed. The tangential-contouring control was used between two motion axes, and contour error was transformed into tangential-contouring coordinate frame. With regard to error components obtained from coordinate transformation, two corresponding controllers were desgined reseparately. To make up the deficiency of tangential-contouring control, there were employed compensators outside the position loop by additionally compensating position tracking error to guarantee the system performance and enhance the tracking ability of input signal of each axis simultaneously. Several experiments have been conducted on Simulink platform to test the proposed control scheme. The results show that the proposed control scheme decreases tracking error and contour error, and presents excellent contouring and tracking performances.

Key words: tangential-contouring control, position error compensation, contour error,  cam grinding