A study on the feed rate optimization of a ball screw feed drive system for minimum vibrations

In order to prevent machine tool feed slide system from transient vibrations during operation, machine tool designers usually adopt some typical design solutions; box-in-box typed feed slides, optimizing moving body for minimum weight and dynamic compliance, and so on. Despite all efforts for optimizing design, a feed drive system may experience severe transient vibrations during high-speed operation if its feed-rate control is not suitable. A rough feed-rate curve having discontinuity in its acceleration profile causes serious vibrations in the feed slides system. This paper presents a feed-rate optimization of a ball screw driven machine tool feed slide system for its minimum vibrations. A ball screw feed drive system was mathematically modeled as a 6-degree-of-freedom lumped parameter model. Then, a feed-rate optimization of the system was carried out for minimum vibrations. The main idea of the feed-rate optimization is to find out the most appropriate smooth acceleration profile having jerk continuity. A genetic algorithm, G.A., was used in this feed rate optimization.