Remote milling tool-wear monitoring and direct wear features extraction by image processing

The extraction of accurate and correct feature parameters, which describe the useful cutting life of a milling cutter, is important for remote process monitoring. The main parameters extracted and analysed are the highest and the average flank length of the wear land depth as well as the area within the wear land. The problems with the internet speed and bandwidth are overcome by only uploading specific wear-land features the resulting file size is adequate for internet monitoring. This paper outlines a methodology for automatically extracting useful direct tool-wear parameters remotely via the internet for tool wear decision-making.