High cutting speeds and feeds are essential requirements of a machine tool structure to accomplish its basic function which is to produce a workpiece of the required geometric form with an acceptable surface finish at as high a rate of production as is economically possible. Without high stiffness of machine tool structures, the basic function can not be fulfilled satisfactorily.
Since the spindle bearing system is the main source of the total cutting point compliance which is the inverse of the stiffness, in this work, the static and dynamic characteristics of the spindle bearing system with a tilting axis were investigated using analytical and finite element methods to improve the performance of the spindle bearing system.
Based on the theoretical results, a specially designed prototype spindle bearing system has been manufactured. Using the manufactured spindle bearing system, the static and dynamic characteristics and the temperature rise with respect to the rotating speed were measured.
From the comparison of the experimental results to the theoretical results, it was found that the finite element method predicted well the static and dynamic characteristics of the spindle bearing system.
