Simulation of Temperature Distributions of CNC Lathe Headstock Assembly

This paper mainly analyses the issues of the temperature distributions of the headstock assembly of a CNC lathe incorporating contact behavior. The thermal deformation is due to the heat generation in the bearings, chucking cylinder and motor. Experiments were carried out on a slant bed 2 axis CNC lathe for a period of 14 hours under a specified load cycle. Since heat generated in the machine tool cannot be measured, the temperatures at certain points on the machine structure are usually measured and correlated with thermal errors. A finite element model of the headstock assembly of a CNC lathe was developed without much structural simplification to obtain the designed accuracy of the simulation results. The effect of individual heat generation elements over the machine structure is studied and analyzed. The results show that the simulation results are satisfactory to replace the experimental results for