The proposed research involves the development of a system capable of improving machining precision using Artificial Neural Network (ANN) technology. In the last few years, there has been a considerable effort to apply artificial neural networks to different fields of manufacturing due to its favorable features like parallelism, robustness and compactness. Research issues to be explored include: 1) The ability of ANN's to learn and predict geometric and thermal errors from training data of the tool point error vectors, cutting tool location and strategically located temperature probes; 2) identification of appropriate inputs and outputs for ANN prediction of tool wear, elastic deflections and contouring errors; and 3) interface of trained ANN to provide inputs to a real-time error compensation system.
