Cutting Tool Wear Detection and Tool Management Using Visual Sensors

摘要

It is very important to automatically detect tool wear and control tool life in the unattended machining. In the present paper, a vision system which can detect the wear of cutting tolls and estimate their lives is investigated. A target of the system is a cutting drill which is supposed to set in a usual machining center. The system involves two CCD cameras, which monitor the top view and the side view of the drill, respectively, and an image processing devices. Two kins of image processing algorithms are presented. The one is to detect a drill breakage by the side view. The other is to detect various kinds of wear including flank wear, chisel edge wear, and outer corner wear, by pattern matching using geometrical characteristics of the top view of the drill.