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The world of high horsepower drives often calls for mechanical design to be approached from different perspectives. As motors, gearboxes and machines increase in size, power density can become disproportionate from one driveline component to the next, emphasizing the need for more rugged, robust and compact equipment.
The SMMA – Motor and Motion Association is ditching the slickers and galoshes for this year’s Spring Management Conference, themed “After the Storm: Navigating in the New World.”
In the history of machine tools, spindles have been very good relative
to other bearings and structures on
the machine. So quality professionals
have developed a cache of tools—-ball
bars, grid encoders displacement lasers, etc.—-to help them characterize and understand the geometry of the structural loop. But as machine tools have improved in their capability and precision, and the demands of part-geometry and
surface finish have become more critical, errors in spindles have become a larger percentage of the total error.
Now more than ever, manufacturing companies are examining what steps need to be taken to ensure improvements to machine reliability by predicting system failures and minimizing downtime.
For many years bellows couplings have been near the top of the list of flexible coupling choices for high-performance motion systems. Their high
torsional stiffness, low moment of inertia and minimal restoring forces under misalignment make them a preferred choice for maintaining tight control over the load.
Part I of this article appeared in the
October 2008 issue. It provided an overview and general classifi cations of power transmission couplings, along with selection and performance criteria for rigid couplings and misalignment-compensating couplings. Part II continues the discussion with selection and performance criteria for torsionally flexible and combination-purpose couplings.
Power transmission couplings are widely used for modifi cation of stiff ness and damping in power transmission
systems, both in torsion and in other
directions (misalignment compensation).