On Board Condition Monitoring of Feed Axes by Signal Decomposition for Machines with Ball Screw Drives

In order to establish a condition monitoring system to detect wear of the mechanical components of feed drives with ball screws a measuring and data evaluation method has been established. In order to keep the costs down, boundary condition is to use the machines own functionalities only (On Board Diagnosis). At present, most of wear detecting methods use vibration analysis. Here, a signal analysis method is presented that may well complement established methods of vibration analysis. The publication presents a method to exploit positioning data to detect wear of a ball screw drive exemplarily that is run under real conditions. The presented method is partially derived from wear detection methods of roller bearings and may also be adapted for other parts such as linear guides.