Grant: Engage Grants Program

Control of the machined surface quality is of a prime interest to Canadian industries in order to have better competition in the global market. Chatter vibrations are the major limitations to improving material removal rates and surface quality in high speed machining. These vibrations cause tool and spindle wear, deterioration of part surface finish, catastrophic tool failure and noise generation. Bombardier Aeorspace's Montreal manufacturing center (BA) addresses dynamic problem during machining manually with exhaustive cutting tests and forced cutting parameters adjustment. The proposed research will make the process fully automated and enable a better control of the part quality and reduce significantly if not eliminate the cost of part rejection. The objective of this research is to develop a real time control algorithm for the machining process. In this study, only milling operations for aerospace aluminum alloys will be considered. Data will be collected using a microphone inside the machine that would collect the machining audio signal. Using signal filtering and data analysis techniques, the presence of chatter will be detected. If chatter occurs, a new spindle speed is calculated based on the dominant chatter frequency and tool geometry. Also, by keeping a constant chip load, new feed is also calculated. Using a communication interface between the NC controller and an external PC, a feed and speed override command is sent to the controller by the external PC. This algorithm will run in a closed loop and can be switch to off if necessary. The student from UOIT will be working with engineer(s) at Bombardier in solving this problem. BA has a real interest in the outcomes of the project which will give the company the capacity to better manufacture actual and future plane parts.