Tool wear monitoring in turning: a neural network application

Tool wear monitoring is the most difficult task in the area of tool condition monitoring for metal-cutting manufacturing processes. The main objective is to improve the process reliability, but the production costs need to be reduced as well. This article summarises a new approach for online and indirect tool wear estimation or classification in turning using neural networks. This technique uses a physical process model describing the influence of cutting conditions (such as the feed rate) on measured process parameters (here: cutting force signals) in order to separate signal changes caused by variable cutting conditions from signal changes caused by tool wear. Features extracted from the normalised process parameters are taken as inputs of a dynamic, but nonrecurrent neural network that estimates the current state of the tool. It is shown that the estimation error can be reduced significantly with this combination of a hard computing and a soft computing technique. The article represents an extended summary of the author's investigations and publications in the area of online and indirect tool wear monitoring in turning by means of artificial neural networks.