Monitoring online cutting tool wear using low-cost technique and user-friendly GUI

Cutting tool wear is known to affect tool life, surface quality and production time. Because of this an online tool wear measurement and monitoring system has been developed, using a low-cost sensor. The system is able to detect and analyze signals relating to the deflection of the tool holder from the cutting force, and the corresponding estimation of wear is displayed on the computer screen. New statistical analysis is used to identify and characterise the changes in signals from the sensors. A two-channel strain gauge is mounted at the tool holder to measure the deflection in both tangential direction and feed direction. The signal is transmitted to the signal conditioning device, then to data acquisition, and finally to the computer system. MATLAB software is used as the platform software to develop a user-friendly graphical user interface (GUI) for online monitoring purposes. Results show that this developed online monitoring system, using the strain gauge signal, is an effective method of detecting the progression of flank wear width during machining. This is an efficient and low-cost method which can be used in the real machining industry to predict the level of wear in the cutting tool. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.