Compensatory Control of Roundness Error in Cylindrical Chuck Grinding

Traditional methods of improving the roundness generating capability of cylindrical grinding machine calls for the manufacture of an ultra-high precision spindle and bearings and careful and painstaking assembly. This approach, where the effort is directed to the reduction or even elimination of the causes of errors, and which is used for all precision machines, has enabled the achievement of high accuracies but only at exorbitant costs. This paper presents a completely different approach to the problem which is based on contemporary technology and holds the promise of bringing high precision into the realm of economical manufacturing. This new approach is based on the precise measurement, on the analysis of the cause of error, on the capability of on-line mathematical modeling, and, finally, on forecasting and compensation. The system, which was implemented on a cylindrical grinding machine, showed a considerable degree of success, enabling the reduction of roundness error by up to 50 percent. The degree of success of this work indicates the feasibility of employing this approach to other types of form inaccuracies on other conventional machine tools.