Proposal of a new method for the rapid assessment of wood machinability and cutting tool performance in peripheral milling

The quality evaluation of a wooden surface machined by peripheral milling can be achieved by means of the visual assessment or by surface roughness measurement. The method defined in this paper is a novel alternative to the state-of-the-art material machine-ability evaluation providing objective results acquired by an automatic system. Critical machining conditions and surface defects are stimulated by a purposely-designed circular sample. The approach proposed bases on a multi-sensor technology where a laser triangulation system reconstructs the 3D surface topography and a camera records the grayscale image of the same surface while the sample is rotated around a central axis. The dedicated software allows automated surface reconstruction, quality assessment and the detection of specific defects. The method is rapid and allows an easy comparison of different cutting conditions intended as a tool to rapidly determine optimal solutions.