Surface morphology and microstructural analysis of al 8081-mg/zr/tio2 nano metal matrix composite – A base for performance evaluation of polycrystalline diamond and poly cubic boron nitride tools

The investigation of surface roughness in machined materials/products has proven to be a difficult undertaking. The surface quality is determined not only by the parameters but also by the cutting conditions. Surprisingly, a study indicated that when analysing the quality of machining processes currently being done, surface morphology has a significant impact on tool performance. PCD (Polycrystalline diamond) and PCBN (Poly cubic boron nitride) cutting tools produce a better surface finish, which is explored in the machining of Al-Mg/Zr/TiO2 (15%), nano metal matrix composites (NMMC). The study primarily focuses on determining the best parameters for end milling NMMCs in tests for long-term production sustainability. Using scanning electron microscopy, microstructural study of the machined surface will aid in finding the parameters responsible for the cause of surface integrity. The work focusses on analysing tool performance by monitoring the machining process in real time using signal characteristics, forecasting vibrations (displacement) and machine outputs using surface topography and chip analysis. The tool failure was acquired by establishing a correlation between displacement (vibrations) and post machining outcome of experimental study, as a result, the evolution of displacement in the PCBN tool is 24.7 μm, which is better compared to 34.3 μm in the PCD tool at 3000 r/min. PCBN outperformed PCD with a 1.82 μm surface roughness, resulting in longer tool life. Thus, this economical reliable empirical method the problem of finding difficulty identifying the causing of tool wear and failure by correlating sensor signals features with experimental results.

Creating a training set for artificial intelligence from initial segmentations of airways

Airways segmentation is important for research about pulmonary disease but require a large amount of time by trained specialists. We used an openly available software to improve airways segmentations obtained from an artificial intelligence (AI) tool and retrained the tool to get a better performance. Fifteen initial airway segmentations from low-dose chest computed tomography scans were obtained with a 3D-Unet AI tool previously trained on Danish Lung Cancer Screening Trial and Erasmus-MC Sophia datasets. Segmentations were manually corrected in 3D Slicer. The corrected airway segmentations were used to retrain the 3D-Unet. Airway measurements were automatically obtained and included count, airway length and luminal diameter per generation from the segmentations. Correcting segmentations required 2–4 h per scan. Manually corrected segmentations had more branches (p < 0.001), longer airways (p < 0.001) and smaller luminal diameters (p = 0.004) than initial segmentations. Segmentations from retrained 3D-Unets trended towards more branches and longer airways compared to the initial segmentations. The largest changes were seen in airways from 6th generation onwards. Manual correction results in significantly improved segmentations and is potentially a useful and time-efficient method to improve the AI tool performance on a specific hospital or research dataset.

Epoxy tooling: Technologies, developments, sustainability and future interest to industry 4.0

The technology of epoxy tooling, at present under continuous development, is used for the rapid manufacture of cost-effective tools for small batch production. It is a valid alternative with no need for expensive investment in metallic moulds for the development of new products. Current investigations are focused on improvements to the production system, improved tool performance, the cost reduction of moulds and tool manufacturing sustainability. In this paper, both the advantages and the disadvantages of epoxy tooling in injection moulding, wax injection, metal stamping and hot embossing are compared with conventional techniques. Following a brief introduction of rapid tooling technologies, the latest advances of epoxy tooling and their implementation in different manufacturing processes are all analysed. These developments refer to the production of new ad-hoc epoxy composites, increased productivity using conformal cooling channels, the reduction of the tooling manufacturing costs through waste reuse and the emerging industry 4.0 technologies for smart manufacturing and tooling. The main objective is to identify both the challenges facing epoxy tooling techniques and future research directions.

Precision Allocation Method of Large-Scale CNC Hobbing Machine Based On Precision-Cost Comprehensive Optimization

In modern machine tool design, precision is an important index to characterize machine tool performance. and precision allocation has become a key task. Since middle 20th century, the precision allocation method using optimization technology to balance manufacturing cost and quality has gradually developed. But most methods mainly take the cost minimization as the goal to optimize the precision allocation. As the precision and manufacturing cost are a pair of factors to be comprehensively considered, balance between them is needed to meet different design requirements. This paper proposes a comprehensive optimization method to trade-off between precision and cost. A multi-object precision allocation optimization model aiming at minimizing fuzzy manufacturing cost and comprehensive precision of machine tool is constructed. A multi-object optimization algorithm to solve the model is designed, combining the multi-objective grey wolf optimization algorithm with multi-objective decision analysis method TOPSIS. A case study based on a large-scale hobbing machine shows that the comprehensive optimization of manufacturing cost and machining precision is realized by using the proposed multi-object precision allocation optimization method.

Investigation of Gas Nitriding Effect on Damping Ratio of Steel 1.7225 and Cutting Vibration of Indexable End Mill Made from It During the Straight Groove

End-milling is a cutting technology that removes material from machined workpieces by end mill and is widely used to manufacture parts. Moreover, this process is prone to vibration due to low stiffness. Also, nitriding is a surface hardening process with lots of effects on mechanical properties. This study investigated the effect of gas nitriding on a nitrided end mill in comparison with an unnitrided end mill and showed significant improvement in vibration peak and RMS during end milling. To clarify the reason for this improvement this article carried out a modal test to show how nitriding affected the natural frequency and damping ratio of the nitrided and unnitrided samples and showed that tool rigidity remained the same while damping ratio increased so we claimed nitriding improved damping ratio without change of tool rigidity. For verifying this claim we modeled, meshed, and analyzed for obtaining tool natural frequency both for nitrided and unnitrided tool and compared with extracted natural frequencies from each tool FFT diagram during straight grooving. We showed that the natural frequencies were the same with less than 3 percent change so we concluded that nitriding led to better tool performance by increasing the damping ratio without any significant change in the tool stiffness.

Design of a robust active fuzzy parallel distributed compensation anti-vibration controller for a hand-glove system

Undesirable vibrations resulting from the use of vibrating hand-held tools decrease the tool performance and user productivity. In addition, prolonged exposure to the vibration can cause ergonomic injuries known as the hand-arm vibration syndrome (HVAS). Therefore, it is very important to design a vibration suppression mechanism that can isolate or suppress the vibration transmission to the users’ hands to protect them from HAVS. While viscoelastic materials in anti-vibration gloves are used as the passive control approach, an active vibration control has shown to be more effective but requires the use of sensors, actuators and controllers. In this paper, the design of a controller for an anti-vibration glove is presented. The aim is to keep the level of vibrations transferred from the tool to the hands within a healthy zone. The paper also describes the formulation of the hand-glove system’s mathematical model and the design of a fuzzy parallel distributed compensation (PDC) controller that can cater for different hand masses. The performances of the proposed controller are evaluated through simulations and the results are benchmarked with two other active vibration control techniques-proportional integral derivative (PID) controller and active force controller (AFC). The simulation results show a superior performance of the proposed controller over the benchmark controllers. The designed PDC controller is able to suppress the vibration transferred to the user’s hand 93% and 85% better than the PID controller and the AFC, respectively.

Advances in efficiency in the groove milling of aluminium EN AW 2024-T3 with zig-zag and trochoidal strategies

Manufacturing process engineers must continually take decisions to make the processes efficient. Manufacturing time, surface finish and energy consumption are aspects to be optimized in machining. This study analyzes the efficiency of groove milling in milling aluminum alloys EN AW 2024-T3 with zig-zag and trochoidal strategies. Dynamic milling is designed to maximize the removal rate and optimize the tool performance. This generates a discontinuous cutting with minimum of heat reducing build-up with an optimal chip removal minimizing cutting edge wear. The influence of lateral pitch, feed per tooth, cutting speed and coolant pressure has been analyzed. The depth of curt has been adapted for each strategy and tool type. The study was proposed through a factorial design of experiments by the Taguchi method. The machining time (T) and energy consumption (EC) show a strong influence of the lateral step (a e ) in conventional milling. A similar level of influence appears with the feed per tooth (f z ) on the trochoidal. The roughness (Ra) is more influenced by cutting speed (V c ) for conventional milling and by feed per tooth (f z ) and lateral pitch (a e ) for the trochoidal.