An online approach to monitor the integrity of the high-speed cutting tool with coatings

The coating on the high-speed cutting tool can effectively deduce the operation temperature of the substrate material of cutting tool to ensure the healthy of the cutting tool, so it is widely used in high-speed cutting tool. However, the coatings of the cutting tool can also cover the discontinuities in the substrate material of cutting tool. As well known that the integrity is fatal for the life of cutting tool and the quality of the product manufactured. The present method to detect the integrity is off line method, which can deduce the productive efficiency, so it is necessary to present an online approach to monitor the integrity of the high-speed cutting tool. Because the defect in the substrate material of cutting tool can change the temperature distribution generated by the high-speed cutting in flexible manufacturing system, the infrared thermal imaging technique is presented to monitor the integrity of the high-speed cutting tool. In order to verify the feasibility of the infrared thermal imaging technique in monitoring the integrity of the cutting tool, a cutting model is setup to simulate the temperature distribution in operation; then a thermal model of the cutting tool is build based on the temperature distribution calculated by the cutting model. A series of the investigations are carried out to analysis the depth, the length of the defect and the distance between the top surface of the defect to the surface of substrate material of cutting tool. The investigation indicated that the infrared thermal imaging can show the condition of the integrity of the substrate material of cutting tool. This approach can also be effective to monitor the integrity of objects when a large amount of heat is generated when the object is in operation.