Monitoring of diamond disk wear in stone cutting by means of force or acceleration sensors

The application of sensor systems is becoming more commonplace in improving productivity, automation, and reliability. The sensors employed in such systems possess signal and information ability for enhancing the monitoring and control of machining processes. Although measuring force and acceleration signals have been commonly used for the monitoring of metal machining processes, their application to stone cutting has not been well developed, which is perhaps due to the complexity of the interaction between the stone and the diamond disk. In order to enhance knowledge in this area of applications, a multi-sensor system was developed and installed for the monitoring of stone cutting by diamond mill. The signals acquired and analysed by the system include force and acceleration under different machining conditions. The measured signal data was used to perform time-domain analysis. The results indicate the feasibility of using the RMS features of force or acceleration signals along z-axis for the monitoring of disk wear.