Industrial adoption of parallel kinematic machines (PKMs) may be eased by the availability of methodologies and integrated tools able to analyse in a short time PKMs of any architecture, providing the key data needed to design the machine. The proposed virtual prototyping environment (VPE) meets these requirements, quickly estimating not only the reachable workspace, and the kinetostatic behaviour, but also the actuator effort, internal loads in the mechanical structure and the effects of lumped structural compliances and of manufacturing/assembling errors. A description of the developed VPE-PKM, based on a commercial multi-body package, is given. Its effectiveness is shown by presenting results obtained by ITIA-CNR during the design of a three-degrees-of-freedom (3DOF) translational PKM for light deburring operations, and comparing them with experimental data.
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