A GAMF Közleményei, Kecskemét, XXII. évfolyam (2008) 1 Tool Life Modelling Using RBE-DSS Method and LESFRI Inference Mechanism 1 Johanyák, Zsolt Csaba 2 - - - Szabó, András 3 1. Introduction The right selection of cutting parameters for machining operations plays a cru- cial role in achieving the desired economical and quality goals. A key issue of the optimization models developed as a solution of this problem is the reliable prediction of tool life, which is strongly related to the identification of the func- tional relationship between the tool life and its main influential factors, i.e. the cutting speed and the feed rate. Several models have been describing this topic, e.g. exponential [19], Taylor [19], corrected Taylor [19], Gilbert [2], Kronenberg [14], etc. and their parame- ters can be estimated from experimental tests using some optimization methods. However, the estimation capability (approximation accuracy) of these methods decreases when one increases the studied interval of cutting speed and feed rate. Thus soft computing techniques like fuzzy systems and neural networks, which proved to be universal function approximators [17, 24] when some conditions are fulfilled, can find a much promising application area. The objective of the present study is the justification of practical applicability of sparse fuzzy systems for modelling real-life problems, and particularly in this paper the fuzzy modelling of tool life in milling, using the rule base generation method RBE-DSS [7] and the inference mechanism LESFRI [5] is studied. The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 recalls some basic con- cepts of fuzzy reasoning and sparse rule bases. Section 3 presents the inference technique LESFRI followed by a survey on the model identification method RBE-DSS in section 4. The results are presented and discussed in section 5. 1 Lektorált tanulmány 2 PhD, fıiskolai docens, KF GAMF Kar, Kalmár Sándor Informatikai Intézet, Informati- ka Szakcsoport 3 PhD, professor emeritus, KF GAMF Kar, Fém- és Mőanyagfeldolgozó Technológiai Tanszék, Gépgyártástechnológiai Szakcsoport Johanyák, Zs. Cs. and Szabó, A.: Tool life modelling using RBE-DSS method and LESFRI inference mechanism, A GAMF Közleményei, Kecskemét, XXII. (2008), ISSN 0230-6182, pp. 17-28. http://johanyak.hu