Turning force control systems based on the estimated cutting force signals

While a cutting tool is machining a workpiece at various cutting depth, the feedrate is usually selected based on the maximum depth of cut. Many adaptive control techniques have been reported that can adjust the feedrate to maintain the constant cutting force. However, these controllers are not very widely used in manufacturing industry because of the limitations in measuring the cutting force signals. In this paper, turning force control systems based on the estimated cutting force signals are proposed. A synthesized cutting force monitor is introduced to estimate the cutting force as accurately as a dynamometer does. Three control strategies of PI, adaptive and fuzzy logic controllers are applied to investigate the feasibility of utilizing the estimated cutting force for turning force control. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed systems can be easily realized in a CNC lathe requiring little additional hardware.