Microtool Wear Measurement and Assessment

Wear is an unavoidable phenomenon in tooling. Many studies have been conducted to try to reduce it. In the case of microtools, the problem of wear is even more difficult to approach. Microtools wear mechanics and characteristics are not well known yet. In this work, we will focus on the microtool wear measurement and characterization as a first step necessary to the study of how microtool wear happens during machining. A couple of algorithms will be proposed for the automatic calculation of flank wear land and face crater wear. However, specific measurements on microtools will show if these wear indicators are not suitable for microtools.