Monitoring and Predicting the Surface Generation and Surface Roughness in Ultraprecision Machining: A Critical Review

The aim of manufacturing can be described as achieving the predefined high quality product in a short delivery time and at a competitive cost. However, it is unfortunately quite challenging and often difficult to ensure that certain quality characteristics of the products are met following the contemporary manufacturing paradigm, such as surface roughness, surface texture, and topographical requirements. Ultraprecision machining (UPM) requirements are quite common and essential for products and components with optical finishing, including larger and highly accurate mirrors, infrared optics, laser devices, varifocal lenses, and other freeform optics that can satisfy the technical specifications of precision optical components and devices without further post-polishing. Ultraprecision machining can provide high precision, complex components and devices with a nanometric level of surface finishing. Nevertheless, the process requires an in-depth and comprehensive understanding of the machining system, such as diamond turning with various input parameters, tool features that are able to alter the machining efficiency, the machine working environment and conditions, and even workpiece and tooling materials. The non-linear and complex nature of the UPM process poses a major challenge for the prediction of surface generation and finishing. Recent advances in Industry 4.0 and machine learning are providing an effective means for the optimization of process parameters, particularly through in-process monitoring and prediction while avoiding the conventional trial-and-error approach. This paper attempts to provide a comprehensive and critical review on state-of-the-art in-surfaces monitoring and prediction in UPM processes, as well as a discussion and exploration on the future research in the field through Artificial Intelligence (AI) and digital solutions for harnessing the practical UPM issues in the process, particularly in real-time. In the paper, the implementation and application perspectives are also presented, particularly focusing on future industrial-scale applications with the aid of advanced in-process monitoring and prediction models, algorithms, and digital-enabling technologies

An experimental study on the effect of magneto-rheological finishing on diamond turned surfaces

Magneto-rheological materials are a class of smart materials whose rheological properties can be rapidly varied by applying a magnetic field. Magneto-rheological finishing utilizes magneto-rheological fluid, which consists of magnetic particles, non-magnetic abrasives and some additives in water or other carrier to polish the materials. Single-point diamond turning is able to remove hundreds of microns of material and generate surface with micron accuracies. Residual turning marks are the most important factor limiting the performance in diamond turning process. Magneto-rheological finishing has inherent ability to improve micro-roughness, remove subsurface damage and reduce residual stresses induced during diamond turning process. Combining single-point diamond turning and magneto-rheological finishing creates a deterministic process for manufacturing highly finished surfaces. In this article, an attempt has been made to improve the finish of diamond turned surface with magneto-rheological finishing and to investigate the effects of parameters like current, spacing, wheel speed, feed rate and magnetic field on the final surface finish. Based on the parametric study, an optimum combination of process parameters is identified using analysis of variance. Various image processing techniques have been used for the comparison of the surface analysis of diamond turned surfaces and the magneto-rheological finished surfaces

Hybrid multi-resolution detection of moving targets in infrared imagery

A hybrid moving target detection approach in multi-resolution framework for thermal infrared imagery is presented. Background subtraction and optical flow methods are widely used to detect moving targets. However, each method has some pros and cons which limits the performance. Conventional background subtraction is affected by dynamic noise and partial extraction of targets. Fast independent component analysis based background subtraction is efficient for target detection in infrared image sequences; however the noise increases for small targets. Well known motion detection method is optical flow. Still the method produces partial detection for low textured images and also computationally expensive due to gradient calculation for each pixel location. The synergistic approach of conventional background subtraction, fast independent component analysis and optical flow methods at different resolutions provide promising detection of targets with reduced time complexity. The dynamic background noise is compensated by the background update. The methodology is validated with benchmark infrared image datasets as well as experimentally generated infrared image sequences of moving targets in the field under various conditions of varying illumination, ambience temperature and the distance of the target from the sensor location. The significant value of F-measure validates the efficiency of the proposed methodology with high confidence of detection and low false alarms

Non-parametric modified histogram equalisation for contrast enhancement

Histogram equalisation has been a much sought-after technique for improving the contrast of an image, which however leads to an over enhancement of the image, giving it an unnatural and degraded appearance. In this framework, a generalised contrast enhancement algorithm is proposed which is independent of parameter setting for a given dynamic range of the input image. The algorithm uses the modified histogram for spatial transformation on grey scale to render a better quality image irrespective of the image type. Added to this, two variants of the proposed methodology are presented, one of which preserves the brightness of original image while the other variant increases the image brightness adaptively, giving it a better look. Qualitative and quantitative assessments like degree of entropy un-preservation, edge-based contrast measure and structure similarity index measures are then applied to the 500 image data set for comparing the proposed algorithm with several existing state-of-the-art algorithms. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm produces better or comparable enhanced images than several algorithms