Hierarchical strategies in tool wear monitoring

The paper presents a comparison of efficiency of tool wear monitoring strategies based on one signal feature, on a single neural network with several input signals, and on a hierarchical algorithm and a large number of signal features. In the first stage of the hierarchical algorithms, the tool wear was estimated separately for each signal feature. This stage was carried out using either simple neural networks or polynomial approximation. In the second stage, the results obtained in the first one, were integrated into the final tool wear evaluation. The integration was carried out by the use of either a neural network or averaging. The paper shows a considerable advantage of the hierarchical models over conventional industrial solutions (single signal feature) and typical laboratory solutions (single, large neural network).