Study Based on Sound Monitoring as a Means for Superficial Quality Control in Intermittent Turning of Magnesium Workpieces

The usage of the monitoring processes can improve the efficiency in the machining operations, allowing the reduction of costs and waste. Processes that monitor the acoustic emissions, cutting forces or vibrations present great results, however, they are very expensive. In this paper, it was studied a low cost alternative to monitor the turning of UNS M11917 magnesium workpieces. The experiments were defined employing different machining conditions: cutting speed and feed rate, and various workpiece geometries to analyze the sound signal in the intermittent turning process. Four response variables were analyzed: two related to the surface roughness and the other two related to the sound signal. In spite of ambient noises, the method proved to be useful to predict the surface quality of the machined surface based on the maximum peak-to-peak amplitude of the sound signal.