Increasing the Measuring Accuracy of a Sensory Swing Clamp by Multi-Sensor Evaluation

The growing flexibility of modern production systems complicates the quality assurance and process safety of mechanical processing. As an import component of milling machines, the workpiece clamping systems plays a quality-determining role within every milling process. Thus, a sensory workpiece clamping system that utilizes sensory swing clamps was developed in former research work in order to provide monitoring capabilities. This contribution deals with the experimental analysis of the multiple integrated sensors of the sensory swing clamp and the characterization of their measuring capability toward different measurands. By means of the stepwise linear regression method, different models were developed that enable the determination of the clamping force, the hydraulic pressure, and the piston position. The results verify that the multi-sensor evaluation significantly increases the measuring accuracy of a sensory swing clamp. Thus, the measuring accuracy is measurable with a standard deviation of 0.05 MPa for the hydraulic pressure, 101 N for the clamping force, and 0.62 mm for the piston position. Furthermore, the practicability and flexible use at varying boundary conditions is proved.