Loud harmonic resonance in machining process. How do I dampen?
Loud harmonic resonance in machining process. How do I dampen?
(OP)
I have a process running on a CNC turning center that produces a loud enough harmonic vibration that hearing protection is required. A grooving tool is used to plunge a 3/8" wide slot at a 3.0 DIA. The cut is made inside a hub about 4.0" deep. I know there are devibe tools available, but at this point they are cost prohibitive. Could somebody please provide a method by which I may solve this problem in house by modifying the current tooling? I have a tool and die department and may be able to get somebody to hook up an accelerometer and O-scope to determine frequency.
RE: Loud harmonic resonance in machining process. How do I dampen?
You could perhaps use a smaller grooving tool and take several bites at the groove - you mentioned cnc...
How about using pressurized air instead of coolant on this operation? In most metals you can speed it up fast enough to get into "high speed machining" relm where the chip comes off red hot and plyable. I did this with large oil-field pipe couplings "extreme line casing" stuff. It worked wonderfully but scared the hell out of the operators... It was boring also, but in 8" to 12" couplings, on a 65hp lathe... Watch the chip build up - there is significant heat available to distort all sorts of things.
Larry
RE: Loud harmonic resonance in machining process. How do I dampen?
RE: Loud harmonic resonance in machining process. How do I dampen?
As an alternative to what is mentioned above, you could try to install a squeeze film damper on the outside of the hub. An outer ring with properly dimensioned internal O-ring grooves at each end would be fit over the outside of the hub. The space between the O-rings is filled with grease. The ring-hub fit is of the same order as what would be used for a hydrodynamic journal bearing of similar size (maybe ~0.004" diametral clearance). The O-rings act as radial springs as well as sealing the grease in. The grease is displaced and sheared as the outer ring moves, adding damping. A similar device is used (with circulating oil rather than grease) in the roller element bearing supports in many gas turbines. Of course, this approach would require machining the outside of the hub to a tight tolerance for the O-rings to seal.
The dampened tools that I have seen (which are very few) have a mass in an internal cavity filled with oil so that the oil shearing adds damping. It may be possible to modify the tool to utilize constrained layer elastomer damping as I have mentioned for the hub.
To optimize any of the above ideas would take a detailed FEA analysis coupled with actual vibration spectrums of the existing setup. This would not be cheap. Hopefully, you can take one or more of the ideas and do some trials to come up with a "good enough" rather than an optimum solution.