This paper presents an error modeling methodology that enables the tolerance design, assembly and kinematic calibration of a class of 3-DOF parallel kinematic machines with parallelogram struts to be integrated into a unified framework. The error mapping function is formulated to identify the source errors affecting the uncompensable pose error. The sensitivity analysis in the sense of statistics is also carried out to investigate the influences of source errors on the pose accuracy. An assembly process that can effectively minimize the uncompensable pose error is proposed as one of the results of this investigation.
