Intelligent tool-holding with feedback control for metal-cutting machine tools

This project will create a new product that will automatically improve the surface finish of boring operations in production machine tools. It combines mechanical design for optimising sensor location with advanced modelling to ensure optimal and robust correction values.

It builds on the successful Innovate UK project, "Intelligent tool-holding for metal cutting machine tools" where both partners showed the feasibility of predicting the surface roughness of a turned bore when using inputs from a vibration sensor mounted in the tool holder.

The innovation in the new project is that we are mounting sensors in the tool holder for deep hole boring on turning operations that will provide feedback for automatic adjustments of machining parameters, as opposed to an experienced operator having to manually adjust during the process. This will lead to improved productivity in the machining process.

The main areas of innovation, in order of importance, are:

1. To take the advanced surface prediction algorithms and produce corrective models that are robust in manufacturing environments and targeted at improving surface finish.
2. To produce a generalised approach to the data acquisition, modelling and feedback to prove that the technology can be used for automatic control with different sized tooling and on different machines.
3. To improve the existing state-of-the-art models to allow control based only on data from the tool holder, rather than expensive tool-mounted sensors, which are not commonly available in industry.

The project will deliver five demonstrators to show the ability of the system to be applied on different machine tool types and boring bar sizes.