摘要：Thermal origin errors play a critical role in themachining accuracy achieved when using machine toolsand significantly influence the surface quality of the fin-ished workpiece. The origin and formative cause of certainmachining errors has been observed to be closely linked tothe temperature of critical elements of the machine tool [1,2]. When a machine tool is working, the temperatures ofvarious components vary with position and the influence ofvarious heat sources. Owing to the complexity of the na-ture and distributions of the heat sources, non-uniformtemperature fields are formed in the mechanical compo-nents of the machine tool. So different degrees of thermalexpansivity are generated in different components of themachine tool, and the original relative positions betweenthe components are altered. Accordingly, the machiningaccuracy of the machine tool will decrease. For instance, inhigh speed precision machining, friction heats the spindlebearing, leading to a rapid increase in temperature. Ther-mal origin errors can account for as much as 50-70% of thedimensional errors on a machined workpiece [3-5]. There-fore, it is important to understand the thermal performanceof machine tools.
