Beschreibung
Spindle cooling systems are essential to suppress the thermal displacements of machine tools. However, they are one of the main energy consuming units in machine tools. Therefore, the trade-off between their energy efficiency and thermal displacement needs to be investigated and relevant mitigation methods developed. This paper proposes an on–off cooling method that reduces the energy consumption of a hot-gas-bypass type spindle cooling system with minimal thermal displacement of machine tools. Evaluations conducted on two machine tools (specifically, a vertical machining center and a turn-mill center) verify that the proposed method enables the cooling system to operate more energy efficiently.