Static Stiffness Tuning Method of Rotational Joint of Machining Center

A method has been developed to tune the static stiffness at a rotation joint considering the whole machine tool system by interactive use of finite element method and experiment. This paper describes the procedure of this method and shows the results. The method uses the static experiment on measurement model which is set-up so that the effects of uncertain factors can be excluded. For FEM simulation, the rotation joint model is simplified using only spindle, bearing and spring. At the rotation joint, the damping coefficient is ignored, The spindle and bearing is connected by only spring. By static experiment, 500 N is forced to the front and behind portion of spindle and the deformation is measured by capacitive sensor. The deformation by FEM simulation is extracted with changing the static stiffness from the initial static stiffness considering only rotation joint. The tuning static stiffness is obtained by exploring the static stiffness directly trusting the deformation from the static experiment. Finally, the general tuning method of the static stiffness of machine tool joint is proposed using the force stream and the modal analysis of machine tool.