Tool materials play one of the pivotal roles in the machining system. Tool materials must be carefully chosen in relation to the workpiece material to be machined, the tool life, the metal removal rate, the machining cost, and the required accuracy and finish. The advantages and decision-making processes of case-based reasoning (CBR) are described. The CBR system for tool material selection in high speed machining (HSM) is developed. The case expression and organization, searching, matching and constraint-based adaptation rules are presented. With combining the case-based reasoning strategy and constraint-based adaptation, the tool material can be properly selected on the basis of previously successful tool materials used in HSM operations, which is helpful to push the wide applications of HSM.

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In the modern manufacturing of sophisticated parts with 3D sculptured surfaces, die/mold making operations are the most widely used machining processes to remove unwanted material. To manufacture a die or a mold, many different cutting tools are involved, from hole-drills to the smallest ball nose end mills. Since the specification of each tool is very different from each other, each die/mold is specific with their complicated shapes and many machining rules exist to consider, a great deal of expertise is needed in selecting cutting tools for the die/mold machining operations. An intelligent system developed by using case-based reasoning (CBR) technology for this purpose is described in the present work. The geometry of the workpiece, workpiece condition, and operation type are considered as input values and various recommendations about the tool material, tool type, tool specifications, and cutting parameters are provided.