Study on positioning accuracy of nut/shaft air cooling ball screw for high-precision feed drive

Thermal error, which is of the machine tool feed system, is the key factor leading to dimensional error of machined work-piece. This paper presents a new approach in thermal error control instead of thermal error compensation. For the investigation of thermal error control, a novel/well designed high speed/high precision nut/screw air cooling ball screw system was developed to avoid thermal errors which affect the positioning accuracy of ball screw feed drive system. In order to discuss the effectiveness of the developed high speed/high precision nut/screw air cooling ball screw system, a series of tests was done. As the results, it shows that the positioning accuracy will significantly improve with the use of the nut/screw air cooling ball screw feed drive system shown in this paper.