Tool wear monitoring and breakage detection based on intelligent filtering

Abstract Several physical quantities can be used for indirect tool wear monitoring and breakage detection. Cutting forces are appropriate, since they determine the suitability of a tool for cutting. However, disturbances make the accurate and fast tool condition monitoring based upon force analysis difficult. To eliminate disturbances averaging or filtering within a predetermined bandwidth has often been applied. A new method of decomposing the force signal into components having close relationships with physical phenomena taking place during cutting is presented. The term “intelligent filtering” denotes decomposition based on on-line identification of model(s) of the cutting process. Application of “intelligent filtering” for the milling process with two cutting insert tools is discussed.