Tool Wear Monitoring of Wiper Inserts in Multi Insert Face Milling Using Three Dimensional Surface Form Indicators

Abstract

The wear of wiper inserts directly affects the finishing surface quality in multiinsert face milling. This research aims at monitoring the wear of wiper inserts, using 3D surface form as tool wear indicators. 3D surface height map of the facemilled surface is measured by a high definition metrology (HDM) instrument and converted into heightencoded and toolmarkstraightened gray images. 3D surface form indicators, including entropy and contrast, are extracted from the converted images with a modified gray level cooccurrence matrix (GLCM) method. Meanwhile, the wear of wiper inserts is measured using a tool presetter and measuring machine without dismounting wiper inserts from the cutter. Experimental results indicate that entropy shows a strong correlation with average axial wear of the wiper edges and contrast reflects the evolution of axial offset between wiper inserts.