Design of a dual-drive mechanism for precision gantry

Gantry mechanisms have been widely used for precision manufacturing and material handling in electronics, nuclear, and automotive industries. Dual-drive servo mechanism is a way to increase control bandwidth, in which two primary axes aligned in parallel are synchronously driven by identical servo motors. With this mechanism, a flexible coupling (compliance mechanism) is often introduced in order to avoid the damage by the servo mismatch between the primary drives located at each side of gantry. This paper describes the design guidelines of the dual-drive servo mechanism with focus on its dynamic characteristics and control ramifications. That is, the effect on the system bandwidth which is critical on the system performance, the errors and torques exerted on guide ways in case of servo mismatch, the vibration characteristics concerned with dynamic error and settling time, and the driving force required at each axis for control are thoroughly investigated.