Automatic Assembling of Bearings Including Clearance Measurement

AbstractThe aim of the work is to develop a method for measuring the radial clearance of mounted antifriction bearings in an automatically and standardized way. The measurement of the radial clearance should take place on bearings mounted on a shaft before and after assembling.Based on this method a measurement setup was constructed which enables to measure the radial clearance of different types of bearings with different dimensions. First tests were done with roller bearings as well as ball bearings with different dimensions. Results of those tests show, that the developed system provides as good or better results than the manual test method for measuring the radial clearance of a bearing by hand. The measuring process itself runs automatically. The results are reliable, independent form the user and reproducible.Furthermore the whole assembling of the bearings on a shaft should be automated without to interrupt the process of mounting in order to measure the radial clearance. Based on the results of the measurements, the process of assembling could be readjusted. By using this closed loop method, it will be achieved that bearings will be mounted on a shaft with the specified radial clearance which is defined by the technical designer.A further part of this work is the automated documentation of the parameters which are connected with the process of assembling. During the assembling all important parameters will be measured automatically. In parallel they will be written to a database. Afterwards a protocol will be generated automatically, which could also be used as dimensional data sheet for each individual assembled bearing. A perfect traceability is than possible