Calibration of Static Errors and Compensation of Dynamic Errors for Cable-driven Parallel 3D Printer

As rigid robots suffer from the higher inertia of their rigid links, cable-driven parallel robots (CDPRs) are more suitable for large-scale three-dimensional (3D) printing tasks due to their outstanding reconfigurability, high load-to-weight ratio, and extensive workspace. In this paper, a parallel 3D printing robot is proposed, comprising three pairs of driving cables to control the platform motion and three pairs of redundant cables to adjust the cable tension. To improve the motion accuracy of the moving platform, the static kinematic error model is established, and the error sensitivity coefficient is determined to reduce the dimensionality of the optimization function. Subsequently, the self-calibration positions are determined based on the maximum cable length error in the reachable workspace. A self-calibration method is proposed based on the genetic algorithm to solve the kinematic parameter deviations. Additionally, the dynamic errors are effectively reduced by compensating for the elastic deformation errors of the cable lengths. Furthermore, an experimental prototype is developed. The results of dynamic error compensation after the self-calibration indicate a 67.4% reduction in terms of the maximum error along the Z-axis direction. Finally, the developed prototype and proposed calibration and compensation methods are validated through the printing experiment.