Design and realization of an energy autonomous wireless sensor system for ball screw fault diagnosis

This paper presents the design and realization of an energy autonomous wireless sensor system for monitoring and fault diagnosis of ball screw condition. The proposed system is mainly composed of a wireless sensor node and an energy harvester. The novelty of the proposed system is lying in the point that it can be used with any machines that have a linear actuator and generate a low level of vibrations. The sensor node is used to measure the vibration of the ball screw in a linear actuator, while the energy harvester is used to convert linear kinetic motions of the actuator to electrical energy and powered the system. In this work, the design of wireless sensor node, energy harvester and energy management system are proposed. The electrical characteristics of the sensor node and the harvester are investigated to optimize the performance of the system. Lastly, sixteen energy autonomous wireless sensor nodes are fabricated and installed into the DISCO Automatic Dicing Saw DFD6340 machines for examining their performances. As the results, the proposed system can distinguish the condition of ball screw. The average acceleration level of ball screw showing some damage is significantly higher than the average acceleration level of ball screw with normal condition.