Seminar by Yu Guo & Zhihai Wang

Using rotary encoder signals for rotary vector reducer cycloidal gear fault detection

Rotary vector (RV) reducers are widely used as joints in industrial robots. It is a two-stage reducer, where the first stage is an involute planetary gear transmission and the second stage is a cycloidal-pin gear drive mechanism. After long-term operation, the cycloidal gears in the RV reducer are prone to pitting corrosion, tooth surface fracture and wear, and other faults. It is important to detect the cycloidal gear fault in time. However, the rotation speed of the cycloidal gear is low, which also leads to impact intensity caused by the gear fault becoming weak, lowers the signal-to-noise ratio, and the fault-related components in the original signal are often masked by strong noise. To address this problem, two RV reducer cycloidal gear fault detection schemes are studied. Experimental results indicate that the proposed schemes can be employed to detect RV reducer cycloidal gear faults.