Development of Machine Tool Table Systems with Variable Damper Mechanisms by Applying Electrorheological Fluids

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Rolling guide ways are widely applied to machine tool table systems these days because of their low frictional resistance and high maintainability. Rolling-guided tables have, however, some demerits such as low dampling ability, which causes chatter vibraions in maching process. The dynamic characteristics of the table system is one of the important factors which decide machining accuracy and Productivity of machine tools. It is desirable to improve the dynamic performance of the rolling-guided tables.An effective method to improve the dynamic performance of rolling-guided tables is to apply an additional damping force to the tables. However, the additional damping force will also deny the low frictional resistance, therefore, it is necessary to control the additional damping force according to the table motions. In this study, a variable damping system (electrorheological fluid film damper) has been developed andattached to a rolling-guided table system. The electrorheological fluid was applied to control the damping force generated by the fluid film damper. The electrorheological fluid is a kind of colloidal suspension, whose apparent viscosity can be adjusted depending on the applied electric field. The performance of the developed table system was evaluated by means of the impulse force response method and the cutting tests. The conclusions are summarized as follows.(1) The additional damping force generated by the electrorheological fluid film damper was controll able by changing the applied electric field.(2) The dynamic performance of the developed rolling-guided table was improved by the effect of the electrorheological fluid film damper, especially in the direction of the table feed.(3) Chatter vibrations during machining were suppressed by the electrorheological fluid film damper, and the roughness of the machined surface was improved.