Tools with built-in thin film thermocouple sensors for monitoring cutting temperature

The ability to monitor in real time, the thermal activation and thermal impact to cutting tools has been very appealing to the manufacturing industries. Such responses can be measured with appropriate sensors such as thin film thermocouples (TFTs) built in cutting tools. The challenges have been to instrument the tool, equipment and sensors, which can withstand high stress and temperature in machining process. In this work, the sequence of fabricating the built-in TFTs and experimental setups are proposed and demonstrated. The cutting experiments are carried out under different cutting conditions for A6061-T6 aluminum alloy and finally cutting temperature is measured at very high cutting speeds up to 16 m/s. (C) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.