Robustness improvement of tool life estimation assisted by a virtual manufacturing cell

As the cutting condition changes dramatically in flexible manufacturing systems, the developed tool condition monitoring (TCM) system cannot easily acquire cutting parameters in cutting process and thus it weakens its robustness. This paper presents a new approach to improve the robustness of on-line tool life estimation in NC milling with the assistance of a virtual manufacturing cell from which most of the cutting variables and motor powers can be calculated to improve the feature extraction and decision-making of a TCM system. A robust model for tool life estimation is established and its effectivity is validated by experimental results.