Monitoring the steady wear condition of drills using a wireless torque and thrust measurement system attached to rotary cutting tool holder.

In-situ monitoring of cutting tool conditions during cutting operations is required to improve productivity at the production site. This paper proposes a low-cost and highly reliable cutting force measurement method using a semiconductor strain sensor mounted on a rotary tool holder. In a previous study, it was shown that an abnormality such as tool breakage can be detected from the output of a strain sensor attached to a tool fixed on a lathe. In this study, wireless systems were developed for supplying power to the sensor and communicating with it and was applied to monitoring the drilling process. The experimental results showed good agreement between the strain sensor output and the output of a commercial piezoelectric type cutting dynamometer in the drilling process.