Systems and methods for real-time monitoring of micromilling tool wear
AssigneeArizona Board of Regents on behalf of Arizona State University
InventorsAngela A. Sodemann, Anuj K. Bajaj, Jason R. Vaughn
Life of this patent
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Abstract
The wear status of a micro-endmill tool may be inferred by monitoring the chip production rate of the tool in operation. Chips may be extracted from a work area, captured on an adhesive surface, imaged, and counted to determine the chip production rate. When the rate of chip production falls, the feed rate of the micro-endmill may be increased to a level suitable for the current state of tool wear. In this manner, costly and inconvenient work stoppages to evaluate the wear status of a tool are eliminated.
Claims12
A tool wear monitoring system, comprising:
- a skirt couplable to a micro-endmill to contain chips produced during operation of the micro-endmill;
- a tube coupled to the skirt, the tube configured to extract air from the skirt and carry the chips to a nozzle;
- an adhesive tape disposed at an outlet of the nozzle to catch chips exiting the nozzle;
- a conveyor belt to move the adhesive tape into the field of view of a camera;
- the camera operative to obtain images of the chips on the adhesive tape;
- and
- a software program operative on a computing device to count the chips from the images.
A method for monitoring wear of a micromilling tool, the method comprising:
- determining an initial chip production rate;
- extracting, via a skirt, tube, and pump, chips produced during operation of the micromilling tool;
- depositing, from a nozzle coupled to the tube, the chips on adhesive tape;
- moving, via a conveyor belt, the adhesive tape to bring the chips into the field of view of a camera;
- acquiring, via the camera, an image of the chips;
- counting, by an image processing system, the chips in the image to determine a current chip production rate;
- and
- calculating, using the initial chip production rate and the current chip production rate, the wear status of the micromilling tool.
A method of counting chips produced by a micro-endmill, the method comprising:
- obtaining, by a system for monitoring tool wear, an image of chips captured by adhesive tape;
- converting the image to grayscale;
- thresholding the image to remove excessive lustre;
- equalizing a histogram of the image to improve contrast;
- thresholding the image to identify a background grayscale level;
- converting the image to black and white;
- eroding the image to reduce pixelated errors;
- performing edge detection on the image to form edges therein;
- performing dilation on the image to connect at least a portion of the edges;
- filling the image components arising from the edge detection;
- and
- counting the chips appearing in the image.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.