An integrated wireless vibration sensing tool holder for milling tool condition monitoring with singularity analysis

•An integrated wireless vibration sensing tool holder system is developed.•The singularity features of vibration are correlated with the tool wear status.•A TCM approach is put forward with the developed tool holder and a SVM model. Cutting vibration monitoring can provide a wealth of useful information about the cutting process, tool wear condition, etc. In this paper, an integrated wireless vibration sensing tool holder system is designed, fabricated, and tested for sensing triaxial vibration signals simultaneously. To get closer to the source of vibration, a piezoelectric accelerometer and its supporting electronics were integrated into a slightly modified tool holder. Afterward, the pulse test and modal analysis were conducted to estimate the dynamic performance; milling experiments were carried out to evaluate the signal acquisition ability. Then, singularity analysis for quantifying small changes in signals’ waveforms was employed to correlate with the different tool wear conditions. Finally, a tool condition monitoring (TCM) approach was established derived from the Support Vector Machine algorithm. The results of the experiments show that the proposed TCM approach with the developed tool holder system could accurately distinguish the tool wear status with an accuracy of 86.1% and is competent to identify the current tool wear statuses.