AE Signal Evolutions in Machining by Diamond Coated Tools

Diamond coated cutting tools have a potential to replace costly polycrystalline diamond tools. However, coating delaminations remain the primary wear mode that often results in catastrophic tool failures, causing to poor part quality and possible damage to machine tools. Moreover, delamination events are difficult to be precisely predicted. Thus, tool delamination identification is necessary for process monitoring. Following a previous work, this study examines the acoustic emission (AE) signal evolutions during machining by diamond coated tools, in particular, the frequency response along cutting time as well as during a specific cutting pass. The intent was to correlate the characteristics of the AE spectral components with coating delaminations. The results are summarized as follows. Though AE root-mean-square values have been used to monitor tool failure, it may not show clear transition registered to coating delamination in some cases. The fast Fourier transformation (FFT) spectra of AE data along cutting time generally show decreased intensity for low frequency peaks, but increased intensity for high frequency peaks. In addition, the AE FFT spectra of sub-divided time zones during one cutting pass may clearly indicate the coating failure transition.