How to prevent undesired oscillation in NC rotary table

Abstract

Heavy lathe-mill and turn-mill machine tools with both turning and milling operations are usually equipped with a frictional brake system to mitigate the effect of the mechanical backlash on the gear driven rotary table. In this paper the simultaneous effects of the coupled nonlinear frictions and backlashes on the positioning of the rotary axis have been investigated theoretically and empirically. Using the describing function method, it is shown that the undesired oscillations of the system are due to the existence of a limit cycle in the nonlinear closed-loop trajectory pattern of the rotary axis. Some simple practical rules are proposed for parameters adjustment of the rotary table, to assure that limit cycle is not created, and the multi-function machine does not oscillate improperly. The proposed rules can be used both at the designing stage and also during the maintenance of the machine. In order to verify the simulation results, a complete set of experimental data in a heavy lathe-mill machine has been utilized. It is shown that the deviation between the simulation results and the real experimental data at different operating conditions are quite small.