On-line tool condition monitoring system with wavelet fuzzy neural network

In manufacturing systems such as flexible manufacturing systems (FMS), one of the most important issues is accurate detection of the tool conditions under given cutting conditions. An investigation is presented of a tool condition monitoring system (TCMS), which consists of a wavelet transform preprocessor for generating features from acoustic emission (AE) signals, followed by a high speed neural network with fuzzy inference for associating the preprocessor outputs with the appropriate decisions. A wavelet transform can decompose AE signals into different frequency bands in the time domain. The root mean square (RMS) values extracted from the decomposed signal for each frequency band were used as the monitoring feature. A fuzzy neural network (FNN) is proposed to describe the relationship between the tool conditions and the monitoring features; this requires less computation than a back propagation neural network (BPNN). The experimental results indicate the monitoring features have a low sensitivity to changes of the cutting conditions and FNN has a high monitoring success rate in a wide range of cutting conditions; TCMS with a wavelet fuzzy neural network is feasible.