Methodology for Measuring the Cutting Inserts Wear

In the industrial manufacturing, the wear of the cutting tool represents the main factor that causes machine downtime and it has a negative influence over the machined surface roughness and dimensional and position deviations. For this reason, the accurate measurement of tool wear both on-line (during machining) and off-line (outside of the machining process) is a necessity. Due to the continuous technology innovation, finding new and more effective methods to measure precisely the wear represents a permanent interest for research. In this paper, after a review of recent developed methods in this field, showing the methods of measuring wear and indicating the error sources when measuring the wear of cutting inserts, the necessity to have a unitary methodology for measuring the flank wear is emphasized. Applying it could obtain the same wear-measured values in the same conditions. For this purpose, the measurement errors are determined, and a new methodology for measuring the cutting insert wear is developed. It was tested in the case of six worn cutting inserts used for the turning process of specimens (1C45 steel), of 50 mm diameter and 300 mm length. By testing the developed methodology, it was found that the errors that can be made by various researchers while measuring wear are acceptable, leading to results that can be considered correct from a practical point of view. In the paper is also presented how the principle of symmetry is used to characterize the wear of the cutting inserts.