TEXTURING BY GRINDING FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF FRICTION PROPERTIES IN INDUSTRIAL COMPONENTS

Abstract

The economic and environmental cost of friction in machinery and transport is significantly remarkable being the machine tool one of the most affected. In this sector, the movements are totally affected by the friction originated in the displacements between the guideways and the carriages, which results in terms of precision, energy consumption and component wear. In this line, texturing has proved to be a useful tool to reduce friction. Texturing techniques include frosting and scraping, both manual and costly processes in which the final finish of the workpiece depends on the operator. Other techniques such as laser texturing represent an effective and precise procedure which is at the same time expensive and not applicable in large workpieces. One of the main challenges is to develop techniques capable of producing these textures in a repetitive and economically viable way. In this work, a new assisted dressing technique that allows generating different textures by grinding, controlling the geometry and distribution of these, is presented. This technique allows to create textures in large workpieces, such as the guides of the machine tools and to do it in a repetitive way and in the same machine in which the guide has been ground previously, which entails a reduction in time and costs. This technique has been validated through tribological tests obtaining lower friction coefficients than with manual techniques. Keywords: Friction, grinding, texturing, dimples, machine-tool, guideways.