Signal processing research in automatic tool wear monitoring

A particularly important machine monitoring problem is the monitoring of tool wear in automatic metal drilling systems. The author briefly discusses the role of signal processing in tool wear monitoring and highlights several avenues of potential research in this area. These include the application and development of signal enhancement algorithms to reduce the corrupting effects of extraneous structural vibrations on the tool wear signal. Research directions in improved tool wear signal understanding are also discussed including detection techniques to classify a tool´s condition using knowledge-based and statistical approaches.<>