Diagnosis of the Misaligned Faults of the Vertical Test Instrument of High-Precision Industrial Robot Reducer

High-precision reducer is the core component of industrial robots. In order to achieve the comprehensive performance testing of precision reducers, an instrument with a vertical layout and a cylindrical structure is designed. As a rotating machine, the inevitable coupling misalignment of the instrument can lead to vibration faults which lead to errors in the test. So it is pretty necessary to diagnose and monitor the coupling misalignment while the instrument is working. The causes of the coupling misaligned fault of the instrument and the relationship between the misalignment fault and torque ripple are analyzed in this paper. A method of using the torque transducer in the measurement chain of the instrument to diagnose the coupling misalignment is proposed in this paper. Many experiments have been done to test the capability of detecting the coupling misalignment using this method. Experimental results show that the amplitude of torque ripple of the shaft is linearly related to the coupling misalignment and is quadratically related to the rotation speed of the shaft when the misalignment exists in the shaft. The combination of components at the rotation frequency (fr) and the additional components can be used to diagnose faults due to coupling misalignment.