Design of control system using electric cylinder for automated measurement of bearing shell crush height

© 2017 The Author(s) This paper presents the design of a fast and accurate control system using electric cylinder for the automated measurement of bearing shell crush height, which is an important parameter for quality control and needs to be measured in a particular test loading according to ISO3548-3:2012 standard. A test bench has been developed and an electric cylinder is used to provide the required test loading pressure with the LabVIEW platform. In order to meet the demands for high accuracy, fast speed, and stability, the control method of electric cylinder has been designed for industrial applications based on PLC. The control methods include automatic origin seeking and reset when powering up, fast and accurate pressure loading, generating control parameters by self-learning, and returning to the origin and pressure calibration. The fast and accurate pressure loading process consists of position preloading, pressure preloading, pressure coarse loading, and pressure fine loading. The experimental results have shown that the election cylinder can meet the application requirements, the control methods for pressure loading are accurate and fast, and the control system is stable and reliable. They will have potentials for wide industrial applications