A Wavelet Approach to Estimate The Quality of Ground Parts

The manufacturing process of metal parts is subjected to machining instabilities that can degrade the surface finish quality and the reliability of products. Some instabilities are of transient nature and traditional inspection systems are unable to adequately estimate the grade of affectation in the finished parts. Time-frequency analyses are techniques that overcome these limitations and have recently been incorporated in special industry inspection equipment to improve the quality of the manufactured parts. Grinding is a process used to get high precision and very smooth surface in flat or cylindrical parts because of the target applications such as the automotive industry where the highest standards can be found. This paper reports a technique to estimate the quality of ground parts based on timefrequency transforms that are used to enhance the defects. This makes it easier to implement the technique for surface characterization in online pass/no-pass inspection machines. The fundamentals of the methodology are revised and the technique is applied to the identification of vibration marks in cylindrical ground rods. Results show that this approach identifies adequately imperfections of transient nature and it is able to estimate the extension and amplitude of the defects on the surface of the manufactured parts.