Study on wear amount measurement method using paint for maintenance of female taper surface of machine tool

抄録

In recent years, the automation of machine tools has progressed and the change of tools has also been automated. A tool is generally attached by using a female taper of machine tool. The maintenance of the female taper is periodically performed because tools are frequently changed. However, sensory inspection is still used in the maintenance of inner surface of female tapers. This maintenance method depends on the skill and sense of the craftsman and requires a lot of inspection time. Thus, a maintenance method based on sensory inspection hinders the promotion of automation at manufacturing job sites. Therefore, we propose a new measurement method to revolutionize the current one. In the proposed method, the depth of the wear area is quantitatively measured using the difference in color intensity caused by the difference in paint film thickness. Thus, using this method, the depth of the wear area can be easily measured by simply applying paint to the object and acquiring an image thereafter. In order to verify the resolution of the proposed method, an experiment was conducted on an experimental specimen with a known amount of wear. The experimental results indicated that the proposed method was capable of measuring at sub-micron resolution.