INCREASING PERFORMANCE AND ENERGY EFFICENCY OF A MACHINE TOOL THROUGH HYDROSTATIC LINEAR GUIDEWAYS WITH SINGLE DIGIT MICROMETRE FLUID FILM THICKNESS

Abstract

Ever increasing requirements to machine tool performance lead to a shift from regular roller bearing towards hydrostatic guideways. These have many advantageous properties, such as non-existent stick and slip, nearly no wear, while increasing dampening and stiffness. Compared to traditional guideways, hydrostatic have a constant energy demand, resulting from pump losses. The pump losses are composed out of the pressure and the flow rate of the fluid. The flowrate can be influenced with the third power via the fluid film thickness. For this, a novel micro gap design is proposed and tested. The static and dynamic stiffness and the power consumption are analysed and compared.