Virtual instrumentation for motorized spindle performance monitoring

High speed machining technology is used in a broad range of applications to machine ferrous metals and nonmetallic material. Based on its application, a motorized high speed, high power/torque spindle is the key technology that drives high speed machining. Performance monitoring determines if the equipment is operating as expected. This paper presents a new motorized spindle performance monitoring system based on the PXI hardware platform and the LabVIEW software platform. The whole system is composed of the following parts: sensing, data acquisition and displaying, condition monitoring and signal analysis. Experimental results show that the developed monitoring system is efficient for acquiring, analyzing, presenting sensory signals simultaneously, while the developed signal processing techniques are effective for detecting the performance of motorized spindle.