Motion Error Compensation Method for Hydrostatic Tables Using Actively Controlled Capillaries

Abstract

To compensate for the motion errors in hydrostatic tables, a method to actively control the clearance of a bearing corresponding to the amount of error using actively controlled capillaries is introduced in this paper. The design method for an actively controlled capillary that considers the output rate of a piezo actuator and the amount of error that must be corrected is described. The basic characteristics of such a system were tested, such as the maximum controllable range of the error, micro-step response, and available dynamic bandwidth when the capillary was installed in a hydrostatic table. The tests demonstrated that the maximum controllable range was 2.4 /im, the resolution was 27 nm, and the frequency bandwidth was 5.5 Hz. Simultaneous compensation of the linear and angular motion errors using two actively controlled capillaries was also performed for a hydrostatic table driven by a ballscrew and a DC servomotor. An iterative compensation method was applied to improve the compensation characteristics. Experimental results showed that the linear and angular motion errors were improved to 0.12 µm and 0.20 arcsec, which were about 1/15th and l/6th of the initial motion errors, respectively. These results confirmed that the proposed compensation method improves the motion accuracy of hydrostatic tables very effectively.