Advanced monitoring of machining operations

CIRP has had a long history of research and publication on the development and implementation of sensor monitoring of machining operations including tool condition monitoring, unmanned machining, process control and, more recently, advanced topics in machining monitoring, innovative signal processing, sensor fusion and related applications. This keynote follows a recent update of the literature on tool condition monitoring and documents the work of the cutting scientific technical committee in CIRP. The paper reviews the past contributions of CIRP in these areas and provides an up-to-date comprehensive survey of sensor technologies, signal processing, and decision making strategies for process monitoring. Application examples to industrial processes including reconfigurable sensor systems are reported. Future challenges and trends in sensor based machining operation monitoring are presented. (C) 2010 CIRP.