A Milling Stability Monitoring System Based on a Dynamic Force-Sensing Vise

Traditional machining stability assessments, typically relying on accelerometers, acoustic emission sensors, microphones, or dynamometers, encounter persistent limitations. These include high costs, complex deployment and signal conditioning, susceptibility to environmental disturbances, and a narrow focus on simple go/no-go chatter classification. To address these challenges, this work introduces a cost-effective milling stability monitoring system that integrates a dynamic force-sensing vise with a single-board computer. The system employs a simplified single-axis sensing approach, strategically designed to avoid inter-axis cross-talk errors common in multi-axis configurations. The sensor achieves 1.3 mV/N sensitivity and 4.6% linearity error over ±800 N, performance levels demonstrated to be sufficient for stability evaluation. A low-power edge computer processes conditioned signals in real time using a computationally efficient Stability Index (SI), which quantifies vibration severity with substantially reduced computational load compared to conventional algorithms, enabling fast and energy-efficient operation. Experimental validation confirms the capability of the method to detect high-frequency chatter in small-diameter milling with uniform-pitch tools. The integrated system therefore offers a practical and accessible solution for real-time, on-machine stability quantification, providing a reliable means to enhance cutting condition assessment in industrial CNC machining applications.