An Image Processing Approach for Morphology Characterization of Serration in Ti-6Al-7Nb Chip Sliding Surface

Titanium alloys, namely Ti-6Al-7Nb, have found growing importance in biomedical industry applications. CNC machining plays a decisive role in the production of these components. This work presents a method for the classification of shape and evaluation of morphology and size of Ti-6Al-7Nb segmented chip, turned with different cutting parameters. The method is based on the association of optical microscopy and digital image processing and analysis. Theoretical morphological data have been compared with the experimental image data obtained by digital microscopy. There was a remarkable shift of teeth morphology by increasing the cutting speed from 30 to 90 m/min. This suggests that for the cutting conditions tested for Ti-6Al-7Nb, increasing cutting speed will intensify the thermal effect responsible for the formation of narrow deformation zones which will promote the appearance of tooth morphologies. The advantage of the approach is its effectiveness in inspecting the evolution of chip segmentation geometry during the machining process.