Posted to News on 27th Feb 2007, 16:54
ETA+ ball screws are 50% stiffer with 67% less friction
August Steinmeyer GmbH & Co KG, a leading manufacturer of ballscrew and nut assemblies, is introducing its new ETA+ ball screw design at Machine Building 2007. The new ball screw will improve the performance of machine tools, especially high-speed and high-accuracy tools.
The company says that the ETA+ comes very close to being the ideal linkage between motor and slide by providing an extremely stiff but highly efficient connection with no reversing error. Rigidity has been increased by 50 per cent compared to standard ballscrews, and friction reduced by 67 per cent.
Improved dynamics are only one of the results. No reversing error means that the ETA+ ball screw has a perfectly linear behaviour regardless of speeds and direction of motion. As a result, control errors are reduced. This has been proven in ball-bar tests where the 'quadrant changing' error has been reduced to a fraction of the value achieved with conventional ball screws.
ETA+ will help machine builders to minimise cost, as the reduced friction prolongs the life of the ball screw and results in less heat being generated, therefore reducing the cost of cooling. Another advantage of the improved design is reduced noise.
Installing ETA+ instead of conventional ball screws does not require any mechanical design changes to the machine; the external dimensions of ETA+ are the same as many standard ball screws and the new ball screw can easily replace them. One of the latest applications of ETA+ is in actuators for motion platforms used in flight simulators.
