Spindle Vibration Monitoring, Temperature and Gravity Sensing

Marposs Corporation (Auburn Hills, MI) offers the new Artis VM-03 vibration monitoring module with temperature and gravity sensing capability. Located on the machine spindle, the VM-03 determines the position of the spindle in space while monitoring machine tool temperature, velocity of vibrations and acceleration, helping to minimize potential machine and tool damage caused by spindle issues. Bearing failures are responsible for 85 percent of spindle damages and 40 percent of bearing damages are due to collisions. Indications that there may be damages to the spindle can be recognized through a reduction of workpiece quality, an increase in bearing temperature, and through vibrations caused by bearing fatigue and raceway damage. The VM-03 aids in avoiding these issues by providing machine protection through detection of overload and potential crash, process monitoring to optimize cutting process parameters, and machine condition monitoring through predictive maintenance.

The VM-03 provides alarm output for acceleration in the form of warning, soft stop or hard stop, a temperature warning and a gravity value warning with registration of alarms occurring within +5 seconds of an event occurrence. All of this event data is recorded, illustrating operational processes and revealing any anomalies. For OEMs, access to this level of data can help protect from potential warranty claims. As part of the Genior Modular tool and process monitoring systems, visualization of the VM-03 collected data for machine monitoring can be achieved with a GEM VISU plug-in that provides resolution of 1 ms and a data log file available through hookup to a PC. Recording of the spindle working hours is divided into velocity of vibration classes and black box capability for the last 1,000 recorded events. For machine condition monitoring, VM-03 VISUSCOPE software must be installed on an external Windows x86 PC with selectable resolution between 0.05 ms to 1 ms.

The Genior system is a comprehensive, fully automatic solution with multi-sensor and multi-screen visualization capability to effectively monitor the machine, spindles, axis, and the tool to optimize the cutting process.

Marposs Corporation, 3300 Cross Creek Parkway, Auburn Hills, MI 48326, 248-370-0404, marposs@us.marposs.com, www.marposs.com.