Design of a Stewart Platform for General Machining Using Magnetic Bearings

Presented are the details of the design of a Stewart Platform, or hexapod, to be used for generalized machining. Because of the nature of the platform, six degree of freedom machining is possible with a fairly large range of motion, and thus is applicable to a relatively large suite of manufacturing tasks including drilling, grinding, milling, welding and others. Further, the platform is inherently well suited for precision positioning due to its stiffness. This stiffness can be significantly enhanced by the use of magnetic bearings. Together, these features make the design of this platform attractive as a precise positioning tool for machining purposes.