WO2012052525A1

WO2012052525A1 - Device for the highly dynamic movement of the working point of a beam

Info

Publication number: WO2012052525A1
Application number: PCT/EP2011/068376
Authority: WO
Inventors: Andreas Ehlerding
Original assignee: Trumpf Werkzeugmaschinen Gmbh + Co. Kg
Priority date: 2010-10-23
Filing date: 2011-10-20
Publication date: 2012-04-26
Also published as: DE102010049454A1

Abstract

The invention relates to a device for the highly dynamic movement of the working point (40) of a beam (30), as part of a moving apparatus for the coordinated movement of the working point (40), and a device (41) for supplying an auxiliary medium to said working point (40), characterised in that a rapidly accelerable drive option with a short stroke is provided at least for a beam-guiding element (28, 29, 35) on the path of the beam from the beam source to the working point (40), that enables an additional movement of the beam in the working point (40), transversely to the direction of the beam, and said device (41) is designed to supply an auxiliary medium in such a way that the beam has an adaptive range of movement as a working space (48), at the working point (40), for movement by means of said rapidly accelerable drive option (37) with a short stroke.

Description

Device for highly dynamic movement of the point of action of a jet.

Technical Field and Prior Art The advancement of new material processing, joining or assembly techniques such as laser cutting and welding, high speed milling, rapid prototyping or post-processing such as hardening, coating or polishing have resulted in a growing number of high speed machine tooling machines. or workpiece-carrying elements.

Tools of all kinds are referred to hereinafter as end effectors.

Moving devices, such as a machine tool, which each allow a translational or rotational movement of an end effector relative to a workpiece in an axis of a reference coordinate system of the working space of the machine are referred to as axes.

Machine axes are those partial movement devices which allow a translational or rotational movement of a machine element relative to a machine element higher in the hierarchy of the machine's overall structure, the hierarchy starting at the machine frame as the highest level and ending as the lowest level at the machine axes for direct movement of an end effector , Axes and machine axes may be identical, but they may as well

Achsbewegungen, with respect to said reference coordinate system, from the

Movements of several machine axes be composed.

Thus the high aimed speeds even with complicated designed

Workpieces can be used are high accelerations of the moving

Elements necessary. In many applications, it is necessary to guide an end effector, either continuously and with the highest possible constant relative velocity, along an at least partially complex shaped contour or at the highest possible cycle rate through a plurality of discrete positions on a workpiece relative to said end effector has much larger dimensions and usually also has a much higher mass.

This requires a relatively long-range and massive leadership structure. The more massive the moving elements are, the higher are the forces which are necessary on the one hand to achieve the desired high accelerations and on the other hand cause corresponding effects on supporting or guiding structures.

Said reactions lead to undesirable, usually elastic, deformations of these structures, which in turn often leads to oscillations on the resonance frequencies of all machine elements involved.

All these deformations and oscillations lead to a deviation between desired and actual positions of an end effector relative to the workpiece.

Various approaches are known to mitigate this problem.

Basically distinguishable are two main branches, which however in the concrete

Application can certainly be used together.

A branch deals with the most anticipated or fast-reacting correction of a predictable or detected motion deviation, ie error compensation.

Another branch with which the present patent application in the

Main thing is trying to keep the motion deviations from the outset small, so error prevention.

In turn, error prevention knows three sub-branches of solutions.

1. stability, 2. reduction of the moving masses and 3. impulse compensation.

Error avoidance by rigidity of the structures and damping of vibrations leads to massive machines that require high driving forces, which thus means high acquisition and installation costs, high energy consumption and in many cases also high wear, thus leading to high acquisition and operating costs.

These costs often exceed the incalculable productivity advantage in the desired acceleration.

To avoid errors by reducing the moving masses, a whole series of approaches are also known.

In addition to the use of novel materials, such as carbon fiber composites, it comes also to use alternative Achskonfigurationen, such as

Parallel kinematics, and there as an example the so-called hexapods. The basic idea is that the various required degrees of freedom are not achieved by a juxtaposition corresponding to moving axes, which means in its consequence that with the number of axes required stability can only be achieved by a disproportionately fast increasing machine mass, but by mostly kinematics , made of length-adjustable rods, which are mainly freely movable on gimbal or ball joints, an end effector or a workpiece together side by side, so parallel, wear and this by appropriately coordinated changes in length or position of the rods, with relatively large freedom in the working area movable are.

The working space of a machine using parallel kinematics, however, is relatively small when compared to a conventional machine of similar dimensions, especially when compared to machines with moving gantries.

In addition, the very complex dynamic behavior of the variable rods and this in conjunction with the heavily loaded joints of a highly accelerated and at the same time very precise movement limits.

It has also come to the development of hybrid forms that combine both traditional axle assemblies and parallel kinematics, e.g. in the form that a traditional gantry machine is a parallel kinematic instead of a multi-axis

Swivel head carries. An example of this is known from US Pat. No. 7,357,049 B2.

At the same time, such combinations have a development tendency which is almost exactly opposite that of parallel kinematics, ie even in the successive stacking of even more axes, which has already become known for some time, for example from international patent application WO 93/01021 A1.

WO 93/01021 A1 teaches the parallel superimposed (redundant) movement of longer base axles and shorter additional axles, wherein the additional axles are much smaller due to their smaller paths and spans and thus are lighter, that is to accelerate with less force.

Depending on the consideration, this leads rather to higher accelerations with the same forces, or fewer reactions with the same accelerations, so that both

Accuracy, as well as speed can benefit from it. Over time, numerous other auxiliary axle configurations have been developed which similarly pursue the same goal. This also applies to EP 927 596 A2 and EP 2 177 299 A1, except that here two or three machine axes with high masses, as additional axes in smaller and lighter form, are duplicated, but that a redundant effective superposition of the movement of the long machine axes, can be achieved by a combination of rotationally and translationally effective additional axes.

Again, relatively high accelerated movements of an end effector relative to the workpiece can be achieved without requiring large masses must be accelerated accordingly. EP 1 724 054 A1 discloses the use of additional axes with impulse compensation,

as the third error avoidance method already mentioned, in a special orthogonal parallel kinematic additional axis configuration in which everyone

Auxiliary axis direction (there U, V) a the masses counteracting

Balancing weight is assigned, with its own drive, exactly synchronous

and against the payload (the end effector) is moved.

This additionally reduces the repercussion of accelerated sub-masses of the additional axes on the respective supporting structures, which again allows increased accuracy and / or speed. At the time of this application, the current state of the art for pulse compensation for additional axes results, as far as the applicant is aware, from the international patent application PCT / DE 2010/001037 and in conjunction with a variant of

Impulsausgleichs, the so-called impulse decoupling, from the international

Patent Application PCT / DE 2010/001038, both by the assignee of the present invention.

All these examples from the prior art have in common that the end effector to be moved, due to the lower masses of the additional axes to be accelerated, can indeed be moved with considerably higher accelerations and more accurately than would be possible without additional axes.

However, in those applications where the speed of the end effector relative to the workpiece is in the range of 60 m / min or above, even assuming typical acceleration by additional axes of about 100 m / s ² , this means, for example, the movement about one right angle corner still causes braking and acceleration paths of 5 mm and more, so that, despite the use of additional axes, disruptive speed drops occur during processing on complex contours to be traversed, especially if they contain numerous prismatic transitions or small radii in the range of a few millimeters.

In the case of higher accuracy requirements, this also applies correspondingly even at lower processing speeds.

WO 2009/079760 A1 discloses a scanner head for remote laser welding, which can likewise be used as an additional axis unit in the sense of the prior art, similar to the already mentioned laser cutting heads with rotor-axis axes EP 927 596 A2 and EP 2 177 299 A1.

In contrast to those, however, the mirror of a scanner head is rotatable with much higher accelerations than a complete cutting head, so that, depending on the feasible distance of the action point from the tiltable deflection mirror, accelerations at the point of action of more than 1000 m / s ^{2 can} result.

To comply with a high precision, however, is associated with some effort, among other things, because of the high ratio between movement of the mirror and the point of action and errors and vibrations in the scanner head at the point of action occur correspondingly increased.

Furthermore, although a compensation of the movement deviations of the point of action by a translational movement along a flat workpiece surface (or any desired three-dimensional contour), for example by an adaptive mirror in the focusing optics possible, the focal length and thus the distance of the

Action point determined by the scanner level. However, this causes further sources of error and, in turn, limits the maximum acceleration due to the limited dynamics of the said adaptive mirror. Basically, such an auxiliary axis unit is suitable inter alia for laser cutting, but process-related not nearly with a quality and speed, as is possible with a relatively small space defined Scheidgaszuführung at the point of action, so that said additional axis units are advantageously used only for a rather limited range of applications. With larger required range of motion, the problem still more arises that the beam does not impinge at a fixed angle, usually perpendicular to the surface to be machined, at the point of action, so that this also makes it difficult to comply with the necessary conditions for a defined effect.

This is particularly true, for example, in laser cutting, where, depending on the laser power, the type of material and the thickness, a qualitatively and economically optimal result is only possible

Supply of so-called cutting gases under well controlled pressure and

Flow conditions and narrow beam properties at the point of action can be achieved.

In order to solve this problem, WO2009 / 146697 A1 proposes only the

To move the cutting nozzle two-dimensionally parallel to the workpiece surface and to achieve the corresponding tracking of the laser beam by means of several pivotable mirrors or a mirror which can be pivoted in several axes, wherein the preferably collimated laser beam, after reflection by the respective last said pivotable mirror, by means of a telecentric focusing optics perpendicular to

Workpiece surface is aligned.

For additional axis units with a range of motion of five or more centimeters in both major axes, a mirror rotation of ± 5 ° or more is required if the

Distance between Umienkspiegel and optics should not rise in impractical dimensions.

Sufficiently cooled and optically stable scanner mirrors with diameters of a few centimeters and a precisely controllable deflectability by ± 5 ° or more but are not realized with drives of the highest dynamics, such as piezo and Tauchspulenantrieben in an economical manner, so that continues to limit the dynamics and / or accuracy.

According to the prior art, there is thus always a more or less problematic compromise between small and at the same time highly accelerated

Mirror movement with very limited control over accuracy and effect parameters or greater and at the same time less accelerated mirror movement, ultimately regardless of whether this translational or rotational is executed, but with better control, both the accuracy and the impact parameters, especially by a parallel movement of the action point of Jet and means for supplying auxiliary media, such as a cutting gas by means of a nozzle. From US Pat. No. 5,574,348 B1 it is known to equip the additional axes of a parallel aligned superimposed axis configuration with further short-stroke drive elements (see claim 14 there) in order to be able to correct motion errors of the additional axes with even higher acceleration.

Such would, however, for example, in a laser cutting machine, the entire

Cutting head, ie including deflecting mirror, focusing lens and cutting nozzle as a means for supplying auxiliary media to the site, must be accelerated together higher, which requires correspondingly powerful short-stroke drives that would be expensive and lead to violent impulse discharges in supporting motion structures, which also only with great effort to be compensated or compensated.

In US Pat. No. 6,067,999 B1, it is proposed to provide a more rapidly movable additional deflecting mirror in the beam path, in front of a conventional galvanometer mirror, so that a correspondingly superimposed movement of both mirrors enables a highly accelerated total deflection by an angular amount which corresponds to that of the less acceleratable galvanometer mirror.

A device for supplying auxiliary media, at the point of action of a jet, is not provided there. In particular, the problems described for the prior art apply to redundantly movable additional axis units which have a processing area of several

Square meters across at the same time be superimposed with langwegigen base axes are moved, and even processing areas of typically between 10 to 1000

Have Guadratzentimetem.

The described problems occur not only in laser cutting, but

also in other machining processes, in which an energy-rich beam in the electromagnetic wavelength range of about 50 ym to 100 nm is used, but especially when the beam effect with gaseous, liquid or powder supplied auxiliary media, only under conditions defined with sufficient accuracy to the desired result.

Said desired result can be the smoothest possible cutting along a contour or the punctiform puncturing of material, as well as the defined removal, application or fusion of material and the smoothing or a targeted structuring. The said supplied auxiliary medium can achieve or support the desired result both by an endothermic or exothermic chemical or catalytic reaction, as well as by a physical action such as pressure, flow, cooling or abrasion.

Depending on the application, various of the said results, reactions and effects may also occur together.

It is common to all such applications in the prior art that both the means for supplying the auxiliary medium and the dynamics of the means for beam deflection, which are available with sufficiently high accuracy, irrespective of whether they are translationally or rotationally movable, are the accelerator of the

Limit action point relative to the workpiece.

The object of the invention is therefore to allow a higher accelerated movement of said point of action relative to the workpiece, even over a rather large processing area, while substantially constant compliance with all essential for the effect of said high-energy radiation parameters.

Description of the invention

The object is achieved according to the invention by providing redundantly effective base and auxiliary axes in a movement device for coordinated movement of the point of action of a high-energy beam and a device for supplying an auxiliary medium to said point of action, consisting of any combination of transient or rotational in at least one direction of movement, According to the invention, at least for a beam-directing element on the path of the beam from the beam source to the point of action, a kurzwegige, highly acceleratable drive option is provided which allows additional movement of the beam at the point of action, in at least one axial direction transversely to the beam direction at the point of action

and said means for supplying an auxiliary medium is designed such that the necessary space for said additional movement of the beam is given.

Said short-range, highly acceleratable drive possibility, according to the invention can perform both a translatory and a rotary or combined movement of said beam-directing element to effect said additional movement of the beam. Thus, in at least one axial direction, which, depending on the type of said movement device, can also change during operation, results in at least three-fold redundantly superimposed movement of machine axes,

which result in extremely high acceleratable but nevertheless precisely controllable desired movement of the action point relative to a workpiece,

wherein the particularly small required free space of the jet movement in the third stage, the said means for supplying an auxiliary medium can be designed with rather little effort so that a largely constant compliance with all essential for the effect of said high-energy radiation parameters is guaranteed

This means, in particular when using a gas as the medium to be supplied, that the outlet opening of the gas can turn out to be only slightly larger than in the case of a completely parallel movement of the jet and the media feed, so that an economical operation and at the same time a large free space in the design can be advantageously used in an application-specific manner Nozzle geometries is possible.

Said beam-directing elements which have a said short-path, highly acceleratable drive possibility can be both those which would also be present without design according to the invention and drivable designed according to the invention, or can be additionally provided to achieve a Stehlablenkung according to the invention at said point of action transversely to the beam direction.

According to the invention, basically, each beam-directing element, regardless of whether its action by reflection or refraction takes place, is used for said beam deflection and driven according to the invention if its displacement or Venschwenkung leads to a corresponding continuous and preferably proportional beam deflection at the point of action. However, it is preferable to provide the beam deflection according to the invention by means of reflective and as close as possible to the point of action elements, since these usually with the same or less effort, with respect to imaging quality, independence of beam parameters, especially performance and spectrum, and long-term stability not inconsiderable advantages and provide precise control of Beam deflection is more likely if the number of one according to the invention

highly accelerated drivable element in the beam path, to the point of action subsequent beam-directing elements is low, and the corresponding Strahiweg as short as possible. Thus, preferably the last reflective beam steering element in the beam path, the element in which a short-path highly acceleratable drive according to the invention is provided. For example, with respect to a laser cutting machine with additional axes, as are listed in the prior art in a number of examples, this means that a deflecting mirror in front of a focusing optic, which should be adapted accordingly, or particularly preferably a self-focusing deflecting mirror, in a so-called Cutting head, so in any case a unit of said deflection mirror, possibly focusing lenses and a cutting gas supply to the point of action,

said deflection mirror has a short-fiddle and highly acceleratable drive according to the invention and the cutting nozzle is designed such that the laser beam at the point of action sufficient movement for movement through the said drive, without a synchronous movement of the cutting nozzle itself, and at the same time a substantially homogeneous effect of the cutting gas within the said

Movement available.

An alternative prior art, according to the cited WO 2009/146697 A1, can also be improved according to the invention, but here preferably by not the already movable last deflection mirror, but this in the beam path respectively upstream beam-directing element, according to the invention can be driven

Said element can be either another mirror which is provided either anyway or specifically for a beam deflection according to the invention there in the beam path, or it can for example also be a collimation unit, which generates from the beam in an optical fiber a widened but aligned in parallel beam and which is driven and moved according to the invention as a whole or in individual optical elements. For a corresponding inventive design of the cutting nozzle applies, which has already been described in the previous paragraph.

In many applications, a delivery option of the entire end effector in

Be provided beam direction relative to the workpiece surface.

Likewise, a setting possibility in the distance between said deflecting mirror and said cutting nozzle, or more generally; between said reflective element and said media feed.

Depending on the field of application, the necessary freedom of movement and dynamics, a wide range is already known to the person skilled in the art from the prior art, as is the case for the highly accelerated beam deflection according to the invention

Drive options available.

Examples are direct linear drives, immersion coil drives or piezoelectric actuators. It is possible and can be both constructive and economically useful, the principle of redundant superimposed additional axes also for said delivery in

Beam direction to use, which on the one hand leads to a highly dynamic and, especially for positional adjustment of the said reflective element, structurally comparatively low to realizing movement within small ways and on the other hand allows more massive and expansive elements for a larger

Movement possibility in the beam direction to shift to a higher level of Gesamtachskonfiguration where they do not occur in terms of machine dynamics or at least much less disturbing.

Said comparatively favorable possibility of realizing results preferably such that for small advancing movement in the beam direction, parallel to the positional adjustment of the said deflecting mirror, other elements involved in the beam shaping and deflection are also moved synchronously. This is particularly useful when the number of such elements to be synchronized in their movement is low, for example, when only one collimation unit has to be moved in order to avoid unwanted focal length or position changes by relative movements.

In cooperation with additional axes according to the current state of the art, which provide a redundant translatory high-speed motion in the decimeter range, according to the invention results in a particularly powerful and flexible three-stage redundant superimposed motion possibility, compared to the prior art, especially from WO 2009/146697 A1, a higher precision at high processing speeds allows and at the same time, also because of the much less expensive, yet potentially more powerful and more robust in operation

Focusing elements, much more flexible to applications with high levels of radiation and different needs to the range of motion of the additional axes is customizable. This applies both to additional axis units according to the invention, which are also or exclusively moved by rotatably movable axes as base axes in a working space, for example on the arm or boom of portal or industrial robots, as well as for additional axis units according to the invention, exclusively by means of translationally movable axes as base axes in one Workspace to be moved. From the cited prior art it is already quantitatively evident that machine configuration according to the invention can be used particularly for the field of laser cutting, since most concrete examples deal with this application. So also the here described concrete examples for the application of the

Invention, this of course does not mean that the described example concepts are not suitable for a variety of other applications, some of which have already been listed or outlined in the prior art, in the art to be easily designed modifications.

Preferably, the invention is advantageously applicable where motion sequences occur at high constant speeds along longer complex shaped contours, or for whatever reason overall motion over longer distances at frequent intermittent high accelerations is required.

One of the most common applications of laser cutting is the cutting of plate-shaped raw material on so-called flatbed laser cutting machines.

The vast majority of such laser cutting machines is divided in the

Basic construction in two groups;

Common to both is that, usually on a shuttle table, while processing stationary positioned in the editing room material.

The somewhat more traditional faction positioned by a gantry arrangement of two drives and corresponding guides next to the work space, a portal above the

Material, usually along the larger dimension of the processing space, which in most machines comprises a horizontal processing field of 3 x 2 meters up to 5 x 3 meters and usually only has a height of a few centimeters.

Since the free-standing guides of the movable structures on the portals must be slightly longer than the material to be processed, thus creating portals with cantilevered lengths of 2.5 to 3.5 meters, which is often a total of 3 to 4 meters long movable Represent structure.

In order to achieve good accessibility of the working space in such machines, it would be desirable to move the portals with stands, so that the guides can be arranged below the working space. However, this contradicts a high machine dynamics, caused by the additional moving

Masses and elasticities, so that predominantly the guidance of the portals takes place directly on the processing level. Therefore, over time, a second type of construction developed, in which the management of the portal is moved above or behind the processing room. The cantilever arm, which is held with guides arranged one above the other from the back of the processing space, has a relatively broad central guide over the working space, up to corresponding combinations of individual guides behind and above the working space.

Especially the first two subspecies are only partially suitable for very long transverse axes with high accelerations, as with increasing distance of the end effector from the suspension, disturbing forces and instabilities occur. Naturally, this also applies to the other variants shown overall, but only to the same extent only at higher spans.

As described in detail in the prior art, a solution to this problem was seen in the use of redundant auxiliary axes, so that the relatively unstable long gantries and cantilevers only have to take a proportion of movement with relatively low acceleration in a total movement with high acceleration.

That this in turn repercussions of the additional axes on the so-called base axes occur and that also solutions for this purpose in the sense of impulse compensation have been developed, has also been mentioned in the prior art.

At planned cutting speeds of up to more than 60 m / min, ie 1 m / s, and accelerations of the base axles by 10 m / s ² , results for the required

Range of motion of an additional axis according to a somewhat simplistic formula from the prior art on the subject of redundant additional axes (detailed in

WO 2008/148 558 A1) S = 4 x V ² / A So 4 x (1 m / s) ^2/10 m / s ² = 40 cm.

As known from other prior art documents (for example WO 2008/151810 A1 or WO 2009/027006 A1), the demand can be reduced by mostly control measures, which effectively means that usually at most 50% of the theoretical "worst case" Value can actually be needed, so that a workable value of about 20 cm can be assumed. A working space with such dimensions in two dimensions would be for one

Additional axis unit with maximum acceleration, of over 100 m / s ² , according to the prior art not economically feasible feasible. Finally, with regard to the solution to this problem according to the invention, particularly preferred embodiments of the invention will be illustrated and explained with reference to drawings.

Fig. 1 shows the total view of a laser cutting machine, consisting of a

Machine bed (1) with a fixed bridge (2) along the X - direction

on a relatively broad central guide above the working space

Guiding device (3) is provided for moving a pulse-decoupled additional axis unit (10) to be improved according to the invention in the Y direction.

Fig. 2 shows details of a said unit (10) according to the invention.

Fig. 3 shows details of a laser cutting head (21) according to the invention.

The laser cutting machine in Fig. 1 includes a device cabinet (4) containing the controller (5) and units, not shown, such as drive amplifiers, other electrical components, Laserquelte and gas supplies.

In the working space (6) is a shuttle table with the material to be processed.

The drive for moving the guide device (3) in the X-direction by means of a centrally between two guides in the bridge (2) arranged linear direct drive, which allows a maximum acceleration of the device (3) of about 10m / s ² , up to the one Practical low - vibration movement of the device (3), even up to the end positions of the Y axis, is possible.

The movement of the unit (10) along the device (3) in the Y direction also takes place by means of linear direct drives, but in each case on both sides and closely adjacent to the dashed lines (11) of the unit (10) fitting, so that an impairment of freedom of movement within the unit (10) is avoided.

Said drive allows a maximum acceleration of 15 m / s ² along said device (3), and, together with the drive of device (3) along said bridge (2), serves as a relatively low accelerating drive of the base axes. FIG. 2 shows a pulse-decoupled device to be improved according to the invention

Additional axis unit (10) in a particularly preferred embodiment.

On the guide (11) already shown in Fig. 1, the unit (10) by means of the guide elements (12) is movable.

A relatively low-speed drive of the unit (10) takes place by means of the active

Drive elements (13) on the unit (10) and the entiang the guide (11) arranged passive drive elements (14).

An additional axis (20) for the high-speed movement of the laser cutting head (21), contains guides (22) and drives (23) for moving the laser cutting head (21) in the X direction.

Details of the laser cutting head (21) according to the invention are shown in FIG. 3.

The additional axis (20) is guided by means of the guide elements (15) on the unit (10) and by means of the drives (16), driven as a high-speed drive system, with respect to the outer part of said unit (10), which, in this particularly preferred Embodiment of the invention, is also used as a balancing mass for pulse decoupling.

The acceleration feedback from the movement of the laser cutting head (21) along the guides (22) by the drives (23) within the additional axis (20) is transmitted in this particular embodiment via said guide elements (15) on the outer part of the unit (10) , and compensated by balancing masses (24) which are movable along the guides (25) mitteis drives (26).

For better visibility, the here preferably active portions of the drives (16) and (26) are additionally shown on the outside of the unit (10).

A more in-depth explanation of the details and other preferred alternatives of such and similar additional axle configurations, the already before the state of the

International Patent Applications PCT / DE 2010/001037 and PCT / DE 2010/001038.

There is shown in detail how powerful Zusatzachskonfigurationen can be realized by means of pulse compensation and / or pulse decoupling, which are thus particularly suitable as a basis for a device according to the invention. In the present example, a variant was chosen in which a low mass of the laser cutting head (21) comes into play particularly by applying to an inner

Pulse compensation of the additional axis unit (20) is omitted, and thus a particularly high acceleration and use of the pulse decoupled Bewegungsspietraumes the additional axis unit (20) along the Y-axis within the unit (10), according to PCT / DE 2010/001038 is achieved.

In accordance with PCT / DE 2010/001037, a pulse compensation for the acceleration of the laser cutting head (21) on the unit (10) carrying the additional axle (20) is then effected. The range of motion for the highly acceleratable drive in the Y direction is about 27 cm, but limited to about 20 cm from the fixed coordinate system of the machine by the opposite movement of payload and balancing mass, which is assumed to be about 3 times the payload becomes. The additional axis (20) has in the X direction over a range of motion of about 24 cm, which is also effectively available without compromise, which, using the known design rules, a largely constant for both axes

Cutting speed of up to 100 m / min is available and, preferably using powerful linear direct drives, in conjunction with the invention low-mass laser cutting heads, accelerations of up to about 150 m / s ^{2 can be} achieved in both axes.

With particularly strong, then relatively expensive, permanent magnets on the respective moving drive side, ironless coils on the active drive side and extensive carbon fiber composite construction of the additional axis (20) and a laser cutting head (21) according to the invention, accelerations are also likely

be achievable over 200 ms ² .

In this example, the laser cutting head (21) is fed by a plane deflecting mirror (29), a laser beam which has been previously expanded by a collimation unit (28) and aligned in parallel. Said collimation unit (28), the laser beam is supplied through a fiber optic cable, which is fed from a laser source, such as a fiber laser, which is located in said equipment cabinet (4).

By such a division of the optical elements, there are significant advantages: a. The cutting head (21) is low in mass and therefore highly accelerated even with relatively low driving force.

b. The supply of the optical fiber cable to the collimation unit (28) is not exposed to the extreme accelerations of the cutting head (21) and the additional axis (20). c. By integration of all beam-directing components in the unit (10), a high accuracy of the relative alignment is still possible.

To adapt the focus point to the material to be processed on the

In this example, a parallel height adjustment for both the mirror within the laser cutting head (21) and for the Kolllmationseinheit (28) is provided by a double line at the bottom of these elements in Fig. 2 is indicated. Details of this are explained with reference to FIG. 3 laser cutting head (21) and apply mutatis mutandis to the Kolllmationseinheit (28).

The plane deflection mirror (29) is preferably not movable, but adapted in height to the usable mirror surface. A particularly preferred variant of a laser cutting head (21) according to the invention is finally shown in FIG. 3 as a schematic section in the X / Z plane.

Some elements not or hardly interesting for the explanation of the invention have not been deliberately shown here, but are the reason for clearances in the illustration, which can thus lead to corresponding adaptations of the illustrated elements.

The laser cutting head consists of three mutually movable units; the main part (31) guided in the X-axis and immovable in the Z-axis, at the top a mirror housing (33) movable in the Z-axis and at the bottom a cutting nozzle movable independently of the mirror (33) in the Z-axis ( 41) are mounted. These units are shaped and sealed to each other, for example by means not shown sealing beads at the transition edges that they form a common housing, by the air or other low-response and for the respective wavelength of the laser beam (30) sufficiently optically neutral gases, even below a pressure of some bar, to the cutting nozzle (41) can be performed.

As already indicated for Fig. 2, the Spiegelgehiuse (33) by about ± 5 mm in the Z-axis relative to the main part (31) is movable.

The bearings and guides (32), between the tubular extension (39) of the

Mirror housing (33) and the main part (31) serve this purpose. Either at least partially integrated in these elements, for example as a linear drive with a relatively high holding torque, or separately, preferably to the tubular extension of the mirror housing (39) attacking, a drive is provided for this purpose. The demands on this drive are regarding the dynamics rather low _"because, in contrast to very highly accelerated movements in the X / Y - level in almost all conceivable applications in the Z-axis, only relatively small accelerations are necessary.

The laser beam (30) passes vertically through a window (34), preferably one

Quartz disk, in said housing, so that conceivable quality reductions of the laser beam are minimized by media transitions.

The concave deflection mirror (35) is preferably aspherical, for a particularly high focussing quality and minimizing deviations in deflections. Said deflections are generated in this example by a total of about 1 mm deflectable and precise and highly dynamically controllable immersion coil drives (37), which are shown in Fig. 3 only for the movement of the action point in the X direction, within the effective space (48) , Said drives (37) on the one hand with the mirror carrier (36) and on the other hand with the mirror housing (33) preferably so elastically connected and driven so that, at said small deflections, a quasi-cardan suspension of the deflecting mirror (35) results. Overall, therefore, results for the example application of the invention shown here in the main axes of motion X and Y a triple redundant superimposed movement of the laser beam at the point of action (40), wherein

1. Base axes through low accelerated motion, from a maximum of about

10 to 15 m / s ² , the units (3) and (10) in the entire working space,

2. Additional axes by higher accelerated movement, up to about 150 m / s ² , within the unit (10) in a movable square of about 20 x 20 cm, and 3. A beam deflection by means of deflecting mirror (35) through at the point of action (40 ) achievable

Maximum accelerations of up to about 1000 m / s ² , in a square of about 12 x 12 mm realized. By a stable construction, in particular the entire unit (10), and application of fast laser interferometry between mirror housing (33) or main body (31) and mirror support (36), a simultaneously extremely dynamic and accurate guidance of the focused laser beam (30) at the point of action ( 40) can be achieved.

By an easily removable cover (38) above the mirror (35), this can be easily removed from the mirror support (36).

The cooling of the mirror (35) also takes place via the mirror carrier. The supply of the cutting gas to the active space (48) via the cutting nozzle (41), which is similar to the mirror housing (33) relative to the main part (31) movable

The bearings and guides (42), between the cutting nozzle (41) and the main part (31) serve this purpose. However, there are also significant differences, on the one hand with respect to the accuracy requirements, which are relatively low here, since a movement below the millimeter range in most applications has little effect but on the other hand a much greater range of motion of a few cm makes sense. So it makes sense here, also because of the high holding torque, a simple linear stepper motor drive, either at least partially integrated in elements of the bearings and guides (42) or separately between the cutting nozzle (41) and main body (31) to provide.

In this example, a range of motion of 30 mm in the Z axis is provided in order to achieve a sufficient distance between the cutting nozzle (41) and shuttle table when the laser source is switched off, for example for material changes.

The cutting nozzle (41) shown in Fig. 3 is composed, in addition to its permanently installed main part, of two other exchangeable elements.

On the main part, an adapter (44) is directly attached, which carries the nozzle end (45).

The adapter (44) serves to influence the flow of the cutting gas suitable for the particular application and the necessary cross-section at the nozzle end (45) and at the same time provides a safe as possible, yet fast

manageable connection to the nozzle end (45) ago, preferably as cost-effective

Replacement part should be designed to minimize costs due to wear and damage, which occur predominantly near the point of action (40).

Of course, said nozzle end (45) must be designed to match the respective adapter (44). The need for different nozzle cross-sections over the active space (48) may result, for example, from the fact that, depending on the application, the working field, which is maximally achievable by movement of the mirror (35) in the active space (48), need not be exploited and thus the gas consumption a narrower nozzle cross-section can be reduced.

In addition, can be achieved by further embodiments of the adapter (44) that also auxiliary media, at least in addition, can be used for cutting, which can not cause the housing of the laser cutting head (21) without errors or damage.

This also applies analogously to the nozzle end (45), where such embodiments may preferably be provided when a useful or necessary auxiliary medium, inevitably or with high probability to high wear or damage to a complex to be manufactured and / or auzutauschenden adapter ( 44).

Sensory elements can also be integrated into all parts of the cutting nozzle (41).

Compared with highly accelerated beam deflections by means of pivotable mirrors, in which the beam is deflected by an elaborate optics to the point of action and focus, the advantages of the example here stepwise illustrated variant in the eye, since such beam deflections for the cutting nozzle still need their own drive, either no Particularly flexible adaptation of the cutting nozzle to the respective applications dusted, or, without said optical elements, similar consuming as this exemplary embodiment, so that the use of complex and sensitive optical elements, as needed there, in view of the present example seems rather uneconomical, Especially as said optical elements greatly restrict the range of motion of corresponding axes, by a nearly exponentieil with the dimensions increasing effort. An application of such optics according to the invention but in principle possible, as stated earlier in the description.

The invention makes it possible by introducing a third stage of redundancy in the movement of the jet and inventive design of the means for feeding

Auxiliary media, compared to the prior art, a much higher acceleration of the movement of the point of action, with substantial consistency of the essential for a beam effect parameters and at the same time high flexibility in the adaptability to different application requirements. The invention can also be used advantageously in installations in which the point of action relative to a work piece is preferably not moved continuously but point-to-point, when high speeds are to be achieved with at the same time minimal vibration excitation of the machine structures, for example in order to carry out particularly precise punctiform machining operations at high throughput ,

It can easily be seen that the invention can be advantageously used for a multitude of scarcely enumerable applications, in a form that can be easily modified by a person skilled in the art.

The type of base axes of machines that can be realized according to the invention can be very diverse.

Both systems with moving gantries, mobile or pivoting uprights, with fixed or movable material, as well as various pivot-based kinematics, such as six-axis industrial robots or any parallel kinematic configurations can form the base axes.

Additional axes according to the invention for moving the end effector can advantageously be carried by a fixed frame in relation to a moving workpiece or by any other base suitable for relatively long-distance movement relative to the workpiece.

The base axles are usually driven by direct drives in the form of

Linear drives, hollow shaft motors, rack and pinion or ball screw spindle. Depending on application-specific requirements, required range of motion of the entire machine and moving masses, other electrically, hydraulically or pneumatically active drives can be used according to the invention.

For example, a machine tool according to the invention can advantageously be designed for shipbuilding or aircraft construction for processing the largest components in the highest detail complexity, or for more common dimensions, for example in the size of car bodies, washing machines or circuit boards for electronic circuits, down to the dimensions of a few millimeters , for the dimensions of a workpiece to be machined in microsystems technology or electronics, such as in the production of solar cells. The basic problem - the size of a possibly undivided work space in relation to the details to be considered on the one hand and ever higher

Processing speeds with high accuracy at the same time tend to increase more and more and at the same time demand for the highest possible accelerations. This allows the invention to a greater extent afs it was possible according to the prior art for machines with additional axes.

Machining methods for which a machine according to the invention is particularly suitable are the welding, cutting, engraving, marking, application of complex contours and structures to materials such as sheet metal, plastic, glass, ceramics, wood and textiles. Likewise, rapid prototyping is a suitable application, in particular processes in which layers are cut, material applied on a small scale or, for other reasons, must be worked with an energy or material introduction oriented essentially perpendicular to the material.

Furthermore, the precise machining of very small structures or the precise application and removal of the finest details at high speed are equally possible applications

of the present invention, which are to be understood only as examples and not in any way exhaustive enumeration of possible applications of the invention.

Claims

claims:

1. device for highly dynamic movement of the point of action of a

Beam (1R-UV) as part of a movement device (1, 2, 3, 10) for the coordinated movement of the point of action (40) of said beam and a device (41) for supplying an auxiliary medium at said point of action (40),

within a workroom (6),

wherein said movement device consists of any configuration of translationally or rotationally redundantly effective base and auxiliary axes in at least one movement direction, characterized in that at least for a beam-directing element (28, 29, 35) on the path of the beam from the beam source to the point of action ( 40), a kurzwegige, highly beschleuntgbare drive option (37) is provided, which allows additional movement of the beam at the point of action (40), in at least one axial direction, transversely to the beam direction at the point of action (40)

and said means (41) for supplying an auxiliary medium is designed such that the beam at the point of action (40) has a suitable range of motion as active space (48) for movement through said short-path and highly acceleratable drive possibility (37).

2. A device according to claim 1, characterized in that said short-range, highly acceleratable drive means (37), either a translational a rotary or a combined movement of said beam-directing element (28, 29, 35) causes said additional movement of the beam in the To allow effective space (48).

3. Device according to one of claims 1 or 2, characterized in that said beam-directing elements (28, 29, 35) having a said short-term, highly acceleratable drive option (37), both such elements may be, even without the inventive design would be present and with said

Drive means are provided, or such elements which are additionally provided to achieve a beam deflection at said point of action (40), transverse to the beam direction.

4. Device according to one of claims 1 to 3, characterized in that said beam deflection exclusively by means of reflective and as close as possible

Point of action befindlicher elements (35, 29) is provided.

5. Device according to one of claims 1 to 4, characterized in that a said kurzwegiger hochbeschleunigbarer drive (37) at the last reflective

Beam steering element (35) is provided in the beam path

6. Device according to one of claims 1 to 5, characterized in that said device, with respect to the beam direction, in front of a suitably adjusted Fokussierungsoptlk, a deflection mirror with said short-stroke and high

has acceleratable drive (37)

7. Device according to one of claims 1 to 5, characterized in that said device, with respect to the beam direction, as the last involved in the focusing or single focusing element, a correspondingly shaped deflection mirror (35) with said short-stroke and highly acceleratable drive (37 ) having

8. Device according to claims 1 to 5, characterized in that with respect to the beam direction, in front of a unit of a telecentric effective

Focusing optics and one or more deflecting mirrors, which allow a deflection of the beam over the effective area of said focusing optics, a beam steering element (28, 29) with said short-stroke and high-acceleration drive (37) is provided.