Investigation on tool wear progress of coated cemented carbide tool based on surface strain

The online characterization of tool wear progress is important to achieve the early warning of tool replacement. In this paper, tool wear experiments were conducted with the coated cemented carbide tool, surface strain is novelty proposed to characterize tool wear progress. It is found that tool wear mechanisms include the adhesive wear, abrasive wear, micro chipping, coating delamination and oxidative wear. The tool wear progress is the coordinated and competitive action of multiple tool wear mechanisms. Surface strain is recorded by surface strain sensor on tool holder. The results indicate that surface strain is consistent to force signal, but with the less signal attenuation and external high frequency noise interference due to the shorter transmission path. Both time and frequency domain features of surface strain, includes the average value, peak value, peak-valley value and variance, not only exhibit high distinguishability of three tool wear stages, but also can reflect the related wear mechanisms in tool wear progress. The results prove surface strain is an effective method to characterize tool wear progress.