Numerical model of fricional damper for glas – making robot lance

The need to design a friction damper for glass-making robots arose because of the excessive vibrations, which occur in the course of their work. The robots are commonly used in the manufacture of glassware. The vibrations adversely affect the work of ball gatherers, which results in a large number of defects in the finished glass products. As a result of the vibrations molten glass may become unevenly distributed on the ball's surface and as the material flows down the ball into the mould the thermal conditions of its solidification may change. It is proposed to damp the vibrations by means of a prototype friction damper mounted directly on the ball gatherer lance. The glass-making robot lance with the friction damper was modelled. The vibrations of the glass-making robot lance tip under static load and impact excitation were measured during simulations. Also the relative displacements of the damper rings in the course of the excitations were measured. Moreover, the dependence between the preload force and the system's damping decrement was determined. The main aim was to select proper operating parameters for the proposed structure in order to obtain maximum system damping.