Conventionally, the evaluation of wear in cutting tools has focused mainly on the rake and flank faces. There is limited knowledge regarding the cutting edge of tools. This study focused on the cutting edge of tools. That is, evaluation was performed from the viewpoint of the cutting edge that is the line of intersection of the rake face and flank face of the cutting tool. The scope involved quantitative evaluation of the complexity by the fractal dimension. Although limited by the cutting conditions, the results indicated that when the value of the fractal dimension reaches above 1.08 in the final stage of cutting process, the tool reached its end of life. In addition, the fractal dimension was also shown to be influenced by cutting resistance, flank wear width, and chip shape.

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This study describes experimental verification of a path interval formula in 5-axis flat end milling. Multi-axis control machining has been widely used in manufacturing industries, and the advanced technologies are increasingly required. Path interval is a machining condition able to consider a suitable balance between manufacturing efficiency and machined surface quality. However, the practical knowledge for precision machining is still insufficient even in plane machining. In our previous reports, a novel path interval formula was derived to predict a suitable scallop height with high accuracy. In this study, considering a tool inclination angle along a feed direction, several experiments contributed to assess the formula's suitability and predictive performance. The results indicated that the formula could provide numerically-adequate accuracy for path interval determination in 5-axis flat end milling.

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A measurement method using light is used to evaluate polished mirror surfaces. When the mirror surface is enlarged, the measurement time is extended and the measurement device is placed above the surface. Therefore, there is a risk of surface damage by falling objects. To avoid this risk, we propose a method using the change in reflected angle of obliquely incident light to measure the error in surface profile. However, errors occurred in the measurement results due to placement errors of the measurement device. In this paper, a method for reducing measurement errors by placement error of the measurement device is proposed. In the proposed method, the results of simulations and experiments showed that placement errors due to translation of the screen in the measurement device had little affect on measurement error.

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