Vibration monitoring for the detection of tool failure in broaching machines

Condition based maintenance of machine tools is critical in order to improve maintenance efficiency, keep high production rate and minimize the environmental impact. Vibration monitoring is a very popular method adopted when it comes to assessing the health conditions of sub-systems such as feed axis, gearbox or single components as the tool itself. Most papers of recent literature are mainly focused on traditional machining process like milling, turning and drilling, whereas to the authors’ best knowledge little attention seems to be addressed to broaching process. Aiming to contribute to fill this gap, the present work illustrates the experimental campaign that was conducted on a broaching machine both in its healthy condition and in a few failure states. The experimental results of some different analysis techniques that were investigated confirm the possibility of distinguishing between healthy and faulty conditions of the tool; yet, further investigations are required in order to improve accuracy and robustness of the procedure.