The purpose of this research is to establish a test model of a highly comprehensive supervision system. It will be implemented on a 200 Series Omnimill with a Flex-Mate Controller. Sensors of tool wear, tool breakage, chatter, geometric errors due to cutter deflections, and of cutter overloads will be employed. Signals from the sensors will be processed together with predictions based on inputs derived from the numerical control (NC) program and on analytical models and simulations. Using these models and information theory, corresponding corrective actions will be derived and carried out through routines implemented in the NC Controller. Thus, this system will be comprehensive in that sense that apart from the sensor signals it includes also inputs from the Computer-Aided Design (CAD)/Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAM) system for more than just the usual cutter location path data and it includes the Controller for the execution of the corrections. Some of these corrections will permanently modify the NC program.
