Wear Amount Measuring Method Using Red Lead Paint to Innovate Sensory Inspection for Female Taper Socket of Machine Tools

Abstract

Machine tools are machines that manufacture different machines and parts. Therefore, the machine tools that support all types of manufacturing are known as “mother machines”. When machining using a machine tool, a cutting tool is mounted into a female taper socket. Wear on the inner surface of the female taper which occurs when changing tools or during heavy cutting has an influence on the lifespan of a tool. Therefore, female tapers require periodic maintenance. In the maintenance on the female tapers of machine tools, sensory inspection has been standardized in JIS and ISO standards. However, this inspection is impossible to evaluate quantitatively and requires a great deal of time. Additionally, this sensory method produces varying accuracies depending on the operators. Therefore, a new method of wear amount measurement was proposed in a previous study to solve these problems. The proposed method is a quantitative measurement method independent of the skill level of the operators. This paper therefore reports an improved method to reduce the error of measurement results using the proposed method. If this proposed method is established, it will contribute to improving production efficiency at the production site. In this method, red lead paint is mixed with red lead powder and oil is used to estimate the amount of wear based on the luminance value of the red lead paint. The red lead concentration has a significant influence on the results. In this study, we investigate the influence of red lead concentration through experiments and report the results.

Keywords

• wear amount measurement
• female taper surface
• red lead paint
• film thickness
• image processing