An Intelligent Deep Learning Technique for Predicting Hobbing Tool Wear Based on Gear Hobbing Using Real-Time Monitoring Data

Industry 4.0 has been an impactful and much-needed revolution that has not only influenced different aspects of life but has also changed the course of manufacturing processes. The main purpose of the manufacturing industry is to increase productivity, reduce manufacturing costs, and improve the quality of the product. This has helped to drive economic growth and improve people’s standards. The gear-hobbing industry, being the most efficient one, has not received much attention in terms of Industry 4.0. In prior works, simulation-based approaches with individual parameters, e.g., temperature, current, and vibration, or a few of these parameters, were considered with different approaches, This work presents a real-time experimental approach that involves raw data collection on three different parameters together, i.e., temperature, current, and vibration, using sensors placed on an industrial machine during gear hobbing process manufacturing. The data are preprocessed and then utilised for training an artificial neural network (ANN) to predict the remaininguseful life (RUL) of a tool. It is demonstrated that an ANN with multiple hidden layers can predict the RUL of the tool with high accuracy. The compared results show that tool wear prediction using an ANN with multiple layers has better prediction accuracy during worm gear hobbing.