Adaptive and Adequate Lubrication for Highest Component-lifetimes in Feed Drive Axes with Ball Screws

This paper presents an approach to raise the resource-efficiency of machines with ball screw based feed axes over their whole life cycle. Core of the approach is the usage of adaptive lubrication, which supplies optimal amounts of lubricant to the ball screw. This leads to increased lifetimes, reduced friction torques and more sustainability due to less consumption of lubricant. Therefore the resource-efficiency of feed axes is significantly enhanced. With a test rig the adaptive lubrication was validated by performed lifetime tests. Within the tests conventional non-adaptive lubrication was compared to adaptive lubrication. Results are lubricant savings and significant increases in component-lifetimes of approximately 70%.