Failure Diagnosis System for a Ball-Screw by Using Vibration Signals

Recently, in order to reduce high maintenance costs and to increase operating ratio in manufacturing systems, condition-based maintenance (CBM) has been developed. CBM is carried out with indicators, which show equipment’s faults and performance deterioration. In this study, indicator signal acquisition and condition monitoring are applied to a ball-screw-driven stage. Although ball-screw is a typical linearly reciprocating part and is widely used in industry, it has not gained attention to be diagnosed compared to rotating parts such as motor, pump, and bearing. First, the vibration-based monitoring method, which uses vibration signal to monitor the condition of a machine, is proposed. Second, Wavelet transform is used to analyze the defect signals in time-frequency domain. Finally, the failure diagnosis system is developed using the analysis, and then its performance is evaluated. Using the system, we estimated the severity of failure and detect the defect position. The low defect frequency (≈58.7 Hz) is spread all over the time in the Wavelet-filtered signal with low frequency range. Its amplitude reflects the progress of defect. The defect position was found in the signal with high frequency range (768~1,536 Hz). It was detected from the interval between abrupt changes of signal.