Chatter prevention for milling process by acoustic signal feedback

This paper presents how real-time chatter prevention can be realized by feedback of acoustic cutting signal, and the efficacy of the proposed adaptive spindle speed tuning algorithm is verified as well. The conventional approach to avoid chatter is to select a few appropriate operating points according to the stability lobes by experiments and then always use these preset cutting conditions. For most cases, the tremble measurement, obtained by accelerometers or dynamometers, is merely to monitor spindle vibration or detect the cutting force, respectively. In fact, these on-line measures can be more useful, instead of always being passive. Furthermore, most of these old-fashioned methodologies are invasive, expensive, and cumbersome at the milling stations. On the contrary, the acoustic cutting signal, which is fed into the data acquisition interface, Module DS1104 by dSPACE, so that an active feedback loop for spindle speed compensation can be easily established in this research, is non-invasive, inexpensive, and convenient to facilitate. In this research, both the acoustic chatter signal index (ACSI) and spindle-speed compensation strategy (SSCS) are proposed to quantify the acoustic signal and compensate the spindle speed, respectively. By converting the acoustic feedback signal into ACSI, an appropriate spindle speed compensation rate (SSCR) can be determined by SSCS based on real-time chatter level. Accordingly, the compensation command, referred to as added-on voltage (AOV), is applied to actively tune the spindle motor speed. By employing commercial software MATLAB/Simulink and DS1104 interface module to implement the intelligent controller, the proposed chatter prevention algorithm is practically verified by intensive experiments. By inspection on the precision and quality of the workpiece surface after milling, the efficacy of the real-time chatter prevention strategy via acoustic signal feedback is further examined and definitely assured.