ON-LINE MONITORING OF TECHNOLOGICAL PROCESS OF MATERIAL ABRASIVE WATER JET CUTTING

The paper deals with the indirect ways of on-line monitoring of technological processes of cutting. The objective of the study is a design of on-line monitoring system for the cutting technology through an abrasive water jet. In cutting by the abrasive water jet two parallel phenomena are formed. The phenomena are represented by generated surface and vibrations. For the purpose of proving of the hypothetical assumptions on dependence of generated surface quality on vibrations the experiments utilizing stainless steel AISI 304 were performed. The experiments were realized at four diverse settings of cutting head traverse speed. The material vibrations were collected by means of two independent accelerometers PCB IMI 607 A11. One of the accelerometers was oriented towards the cutting direction and the other in direction perpendicular to cutting. Sampling frequency was of 30 kHz. The generated topography of the material was measured by an optical profilometer FRT MicroProf. The collected data were evaluated by a virtual tool developed in LabView 8.5 in the form of vibration analyses being consequently mutually compared. Both phenomena proved to be dependent on common technological cause, i.e. on cutting head traverse speed. At the same time the study offers a theoretical design of the on-line monitoring system and of the future heading of the research in this field.