The relative importance of thermal errors in precision machines has increased in recent years. The requirements on precision machines such as higher precision and higher productivity become more stringent over product generations. Improved precision of precision machines has increased the importance of thermal errors in precision machines. To increase the productivity of precision machines, more energy needs to be consumed in general, resulting in increased heat generation and thermal errors, and poorer precision performance. To further improve the precision of precision machines while achieving increased productivity at the same time, thermal errors in precision machines need to be studied and reduced further.@en

Thermal errors are important sources of positioning errors in precision machines [1] and are more and more becoming determining factors to meet increasing specifications. In this paper, thermal modal analysis is used to study the behaviour of an industrial inkjet printer under thermal load and to develop a reduced order thermal error model while maintaining the precision. The reduction of transient thermal deformation by adding extra heat loads is analysed as a possible method to improve thermal behaviour of high precision printing systems. Two approaches are taken and their simulation results are compared.@en