Backlash identification in transmission unit

This work presents a methodology identifying the increase of backlash amount in any type of gearboxes for a movable mechanical unit. No external sensor is required. A dedicated test cycle, of at least 4-8 seconds long, is run regularly on the axis under examination. The motion data, i.e. position, velocity and torque references is logged and stored in a file. The file is later on subject for automatic backlash analysis. The sampled data is analyzed and the so called backlash energy, invented in this work, is calculated and stored in a database. The stored data are trended and the criticality of the eventual backlash enlargement is established using a number of statistical methods for the unit under examination. The proposed method is verified in three different experiments on total 19 (13+5+1) different movable mechanical units and corresponding transmission units with very good results.