Let’s look at how CAE was used to develop circulation components for high-speed LM Guide performance. The three main elements of an LM Guide are the LM rail, the LM block, and balls (rolling elements). It’s the rolling of these balls, sandwiched between the LM rail and the LM block, that provides smooth linear motion. Circulation components attached to both ends of the LM block reverse the direction the balls are traveling so that they can recirculate endlessly inside the LM block, allowing it to move back and forth freely across the LM rail.Obstacles to Achieving High-Speed Performance These circulation components are critical for allowing an LM Guide to move at high speeds. Because balls are constantly colliding with them, they have to be strong and durable to begin with. High-speed motion makes these collisions even more forceful, so new circulation components have had to be designed and developed to withstand higher speeds. While it would have been no easy task trying to use theoretical formulas to calculate how forcefully rolling elements collide with circulation components when an LM Guide moves at high speeds, performing the multiple trials and evaluations required to provide more reliable results could have ended up making the development process considerably longer. Approaching the Problem with CAE: Combining Mechanism Analysis with FEM Structural Analysis For this particular product development, we employed CAE in the form of both mechanism analysis, which can be used to evaluate the dynamic behavior of objects, and FEM structural analysis, which can be used to evaluate stress and warping. Using mechanism analysis, we can simulate an LM Guide moving at high speeds to see how the balls behave while they’re circulating, where they collide with the circulation components (both of which are difficult to observe outside of simulations), and to understand the applied load generated by those collisions. This allows us to make inferences about product performance and problem areas without making a single prototype so that we can formulate proactive responses that ultimately accelerate the development process. 

 Simulation of Full-Ball LM Guide behavior

By taking the information we obtained from mechanism analysis to perform structural analysis simulations, we can see the stress experienced by the circulation components under conditions that are even closer to what they would be during actual operation. As a result, we can infer things about the strength and durability of these components without having to run a single real-life test, which should shorten the testing period overall while increasing the reliability of the circulation components themselves.

All of this speaks to the power of CAE to help shorten the development cycle and get products to market faster without sacrificing product performance, consistency, durability, or reliability.

CAE Brings Change and Added Value for Engineers CAE is changing the way we do product development. It’s steering us away from the conventional reactive approach of using insights from trials and evaluations to go back and modify initial designs, and toward a more proactive one where we use CAE to foresee problems during the design phase and address them ahead of time. As a result, we’ve been able to reduce the number of times we have to go back to the design phase and the number of trials we have to perform, which has led to a shorter development cycle and more consistent quality. Using CAE isn’t just making the development process more efficient, though; it’s also drastically changing the shape of the design work that engineers do. Being able to visualize things that are otherwise difficult to see, like the way objects behave and how load is distributed inside the LM Guide, makes the reasoning for certain design decisions more clear-cut and makes the decisions themselves more accurate. With the ability to do testing during the design phase, we’re able to dedicate more time to more value-added design considerations. CAE is more than just a tool for analysis; it’s a crucial method for enhancing the quality of our designs. Expanding CAE Utilization and Looking Ahead Computer-aided engineering can be used for far more than mechanism and structural analysis. Its applications span a wide range of fields that include thermal fluid analysis and acoustic analysis as well. These could prove useful beyond the product design process and might even contribute to improvements to manufacturing processes. At THK, we’re expanding our utilization of CAE to enhance product performance and drive efficiency in our development process, all with the aim of providing customers with products of higher quality ever faster than before. Figuring out how to shorten design and development time and reduce backtracking is a challenge faced by many in the manufacturing industry. Computer-aided engineering promises to be an increasingly important and effective way of addressing it. It's worth considering where CAE could be used for your products and design processes. Even such a small step forward can lead to more efficient development of even higher-quality products.