Optimization of Spindle Units Considering the Decrease of Bearing Stiffness at High Speed Revolution

Radial stiffness of angular contact ball bearings are decreased remarkably at high speed revolution, because the inner and outer ball contact angle with races arc changed under the ball centrifugal forces at high speed. In the past, the optimizations of spindle units were done under the assumption of unchanged bearing stiffness for the whole speed range. But the bearing stiffness is changed and the dimension of optimum spindle is also changed with speed. In the design phase, only one model of many optimum spindle models with speed should be selected. As optimization criterion, the area of transfer function at spindle nose is proposed to estimate simply and accurately improvement of dynamic characteristics in spindle units. Finally, according to many analyses of diverse spindle models with decreased bearing stiffness, the spindle with shorter bearing span is better than longer bearing span from the viewpoint of dynamic characteristics.