Thermal monitoring and thermal deformation prediction for spherical machine tool spindles

Abstract

Machine tool operations and processing can cause temperature changes in various components because of internal and external thermal effects. Thermal deformations caused by thermal effect in machine tools can result in errors in processing size or shape and decrease processing precision. Thus, this paper focuses on the analysis of heating during machine tool spindle?s high speed operation, which is the heat source that causes component and structural deformation. In this paper, thermal monitoring was used to build a thermal error prediction model. Temperature change around the spindle was measured with a DS18B20, then multiple regression analysis was used to establish the relationship between thermal deformation quantity and temperature fields at specific points. Finally, finite element analysis was used to build the thermal error model. A solution for the correlation coefficient was obtained using the least squares method. The result of this study verified that finite element analysis can predict front bearing and rear bearing temperature rise, and is consistent with laboratory results. The error in thermal steady-state deformation prediction was less than 2 ?m. This information can be used by the controller to effectively compensate the processing and improve processing precision.