Articles techniques et présentations

Optimal design and development of a machine tool structures have great influence on the precision of the machine tool's operations. The present work involves the design optimization of cast iron made CNC Spindle head for minimum overall compliance and the minimum weight of structural material. In the first phase, the static and dynamic characteristics of the existing design of the spindle head were analyzed using COMSOL®. The overall weight of the existing spindle head was noted as 165 Kg. The first vibration frequency mode was observed at 151 Hz with a dynamic displacement of 1024 µm. In the second phase of development, the spindle head was redesigned with the help of suggestions from the topology optimization module of COMSOL®. The modified weight of the spindle head observed was 147 Kg along with the first mode of vibration at 165 Hz with a dynamic displacement of 45 µm. A significant improvement was observed in the topology optimized spindle head using inferences from the COMSOL® software. The results achieved after the implementation of topology optimization study are discussed in detail.

Key Words: FEA, Topology optimization, CNC, Modal Analysis