Motors & Drives Information

In anticipation of the demands from designers of future generations of machine tools, the INA Bearing Company has developed a range of innovative products to fulfill every increasing performance requirement. As well as introducing a series of high quality bearings - for which INA is internationally renowned - this time specifically designed for screw drives, the company has exploited its expertise in rolling bearing technology to come up with a range of telescopic struts and joints for hexapod operation, linear guidance systems, braking and clamping elements for linear motors, and measuring systems for rotary table bearings. The screw-drive ball bearing range embraces both Series ZKLF axial angular-contact types with two rows of balls, and Series DKLFA which has a third row of balls for heavy loads at high speeds.

Both types have holes machined through the outer casing for bolting to a flat surface, thereby enabling the screw drive to be bolted directly to its location in the machine tool frame and enhancing the design at a lower cost.

The telescopic struts and joints have been designed by INA to meet the demands of so-called 'parallel kinematics technology' which is having a big influence on the development of machine tools towards tripod and hexapod systems.

Three different joint designs have been incorporated in the components to provide two or three degrees of movement.

For ball joints, INA makes use of a traditional ball-and-cup arrangement.

In this case, however, hundreds of small balls are interposed between the surfaces, giving excellent friction behaviour while maintaining a low Hertzian pressure between the surfaces of the ball and cup.