Online monitoring of a belt grinding process by using a light scattering method

Industrially ground surfaces often have a characteristic surface topography known as chatter marks. The surface finishing is mainly monitored by optical measurement techniques. In this work, the monitoring of an industrial belt grinding process with a light scattering sensor is presented. Although this technique is primarily applied for parametric surface roughness analysis, here it is shown that it enables also the measurement of the surface topography, i.e., the chatter marks occurring during the belt grinding process. In particular, it is proven that the light scattering method is appropriate to measure online the topography of chatter marks. Furthermore, the frequency analysis of the data reveals that the wavelength of chatter marks strongly depends on process parameters, such as the grinding speed.