Coupling & connections

A flexible coupling is mainly used as the

machine component that connects a servo
motor shaft with a ball screw. When a
ball screw and servo motor are joined, the
center of their shafts should be identical.
However, in practice, this is very
difficult.

For this reason, a coupling should be

designed to be insensitive to misaligned
ro-
tation centers. The flexible coupling shown in Fig. meets the above-mentioned
requirement and makes it easy to join the servo motor to the ball screw.

In general, belts and gears are used as the mechanical components as the link be-
tween a spindle motor and a spindle body. In the case when a servo motor and a
spindle body are separated, a belt is used for transmitting power. In the case when
high torque is needed at low speed, gears are used as speed reducers. A way to use
a gear or belt is called the “indirect driving method”.
Using a belt is not suited to high-speed machining and has problems about noise
and wear. To overcome these drawbacks, the direct driving method (direct drive)
is used.
-In the direct driving method, the shaft of a spindle motor is directly connected
with a spindle body or a spindle motor itself is built into a spindle body.
-The advantages of direct drive are that backlash does not exist and the runout
amount is very small. In addition, it is possible to suppress the variation of torque
and rotation and it is easy to control. However, the price is very high.