Thermal behavior analysis and thermal error compensation for motorized spindle of machine tools

The thermal error deformation of motorized spindle plays an important role in the precision machining, while error compensation has been proved to be a cost-effective way. Herein a symmetrical solution for the thermal error problem of spindle is proposed based on the thermal behavior analysis. Firstly, the heat generating and transfer mechanism are described considering the heat sources. Next, ANSYS is used to achieve the steady-state and the transient thermal field distribution as well as the related deformation with the given thermal load and boundary condition. Furthermore, the NEM is proposed to predict the thermal error under random rotating speed with no use of thermal sensors, followed by the determination of two important parameters. The verification experiment of the thermal error under random rotating speed is executed. The External Machine Zero Point Shift function of the CNC system is adopted to develop the real-time compensation system on the spindle of HDBS-63 machining center. The maximum axial thermal error is greatly reduced from 55 to 16 um, while the radial one similarly reduced from 15 to 6 um. Both are improved 73% and 63% respectively. The experiment results show that NEM method is simple but of good reliability and practicality.