A construction method for a health characteristic pattern of mechanical equipment comprises the steps of firstly, performing time-frequency transform on a vibration signal with regard to the vibrationsignal acquired by the mechanical equipment, performing compression, normalization and graying on obtained time-frequency spectrum, acquiring a time-frequency characteristic gray value, and filling in the health characteristic pattern; secondly, performing Fourier transform on the vibration signal, performing frequency band equal division and graying on the frequency spectrum, acquiring a frequency domain characteristic gray value, and filling in the health characteristic pattern; and finally, calculating a time-domain dimensionless index of the vibration signal, acquiring a time domain characteristic gray value, and filling in the health state characteristic pattern. The obtained health characteristic pattern is small in size, the health information of the mechanical equipment can be fully reflected, and the fault diagnosis accuracy is improved.