Partitioned abrasive belt condition monitoring based on a unified coefficient and image processing

Abrasive belt condition (BC) monitoring is significant for achieving profile finishing precision and quality in grinding of difficult-to-machine materials like Inconel 718. While indirect signal-based BC monitoring methods are ineffective when varying grinding parameters, existing image-based direct monitoring methods currently suffer from a lack of: (i) a unified and quantitative definition of the belt condition; (ii) in situ tool-surface image capture and relevant feature extraction; and (iii) continuous monitoring of the entire belt conditions. This paper proposes a partitioned BC monitoring method that is adaptable to ever-changing grinding conditions. Based on the belt surface analysis, a unified BC coefficient is quantitatively defined by using two critical BC-dependent features, the average area and number of worn flats of abrasive grains per unit area. The belt surface image is in-situ captured from moving belts and is preprocessed to eliminate image defects in a unified form, then the entire belt is partitioned, and finally the image features are extracted by Gabor filter and K-means clustering. The proposed robust method which has a maximum relative repeatability error of 9.33%, and less computation was validated by the experimental results. This study provides an adaptable and efficient way for continuously monitoring the conditions of the entire belt and the grinding area.