Orbital drilling (helical milling) process with fixed and optimised technological
parameters is suitable to produce good-quality holes in carbon fibre reinforced polymer
(CFRP) composites, however, after the tool wear increases, the monitoring of drilling
process is often required in order to keep the machined holes good-quality. The main
objective of the present research was to develop an algorithm for the monitoring and
diagnostics of orbital drilling process using digital image processing of characteristics
of uncut fibres. Drilling depth and screw pitch of the helical tool path have chosen
as independent process parameters. The acceptance criterion was defined as the ratio
of drilled hole area to that of a nominal hole. Numerous orbital drilling experiments
were carried out in order to validate the goodness and reliability of the developed
method. Results show that holes machined by the application of the monitoring algorithm
have less uncut fibres than the holes drilled with fixed technological parameters.
(C) 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under
the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0) Peer-review
under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 2nd CIRP Conference on Composite
Material Parts Manufacturing.
