Off-line geometrical and microscopic & on-line vibration based cutting tool wear analysis for micro-milling of ceramics

Based on their favourable mechanical features, applications of ceramics are continuously spreading in industrial applications. Hardness and the resistance against heat shock make them usable, so, currently they are widely used, e.g. as coating material for gas turbines. The main aim of the paper is to follow the wearing process of the micro-milling tool during machining of ceramics and to compare it in an offline mode against the geometrical changes of the machined ceramic workpiece. Further goal is to monitor the tool wearing process offline, by a microscopic tool measurement on one hand, and using highfrequency online vibration measurement online, during the cutting process on the other. Relations between the wearing stages and the measured online and offline parameters were determined using an own-developed, artificial neural network based feature selection solution.