Estimation of tool wear by use of image processing of cutting dust

In the dambar cutting process in the last stage of IC manufacturing process, the wear condition of a machine tool gives us an important information on the life of the tool. This paper proposes a new method for estimating the wear condition of the tool by observing the cutting dust with image processing technique. The cutting dusts of about 300 /spl mu/m/spl times/350 /spl mu/m size are observed by a microscope, and from the image of the surface of each dust, we can estimate the wear condition of the machine tool. This technique gives us the information on the time of replace of the tool in on-line operating condition, and we need not stop the machine tool for inspection as was the usual cases in practice.