Knife-edge interferometry for cutting tool wear monitoring

This paper presents a novel technique for more easily measuring cutting tool wear using knife-edge interferometry (KEI). Unlike an amplitude splitting interferometry, such as Michelson interferometry, the proposed KEI utilizes interference of a transmitted wave and a diffracted wave at the cutting tool edge. In this study, a laser beam was incident on the cutting tool edge, and the photodetector was used to determine the interference fringes by scanning a cutting tool edge along the cutting direction. The relationship between the cutting tool wear and interferometric fringes generated by edge diffraction phenomena was established by using the cross-correlation of KEI fringes of two different cutting tool-edge conditions. The cutting tool wear produced the phase shift (attrition wear) and the decay of oscillation (abrasive wear) in the interferometric fringe. The wear characteristics of the cutting tool with a radius of curvature of 6 mm were investigated by measuring the interferometric fringes of the tool while cutting an aluminum work piece in a lathe. As a result, the attrition and abrasive wear of cutting tool showed a linear relationship of 5.62 lag/wear (μm) and 1.14E-3/wear (μm), respectively. This measurement technique can be used for directly inspecting the cutting tool wear in on-machine process at low-cost.