Real-time monitoring system of tool breakage using Kalman filtering

In this paper, a real-time monitoring system of tool breakage, which measures the cutting torque from the spindle motor current, is described. The system uses an auto-regressive (AR)-model which is adapted for the measured signal using the Kalman filtering technique. The tool breakage is detected by monitoring the residual, that is, the deviation of the observed signal from the estimated value obtained by the AR-model. Additional processing of the residual is introduced to discriminate the signature of tool breakage from the effect caused by the marked change in the cutting condition. To reduce the computation time, the fast calculation algorithm is adopted for estimating the coefficient vector of the AR-model. The monitoring experiment has proven the effectiveness of the system in a milling operation.