Development of modern society is converging to a status where many human actions can
be performed by machines. To achieve production without human intervention, machines require
artificial receptors. Data gathering for processing and analysis of signals, together with
determination of feedback reactions can be achieved by a suitable decision maker unit. A sensed
value suited to this so-called intelligent sensing process would be the acoustic emission signal. In
the case of intelligent cutting tools this would require miniature highly sensitive sensors integrated
into the cutting tool body. Part I of this paper deals with the possibility of practical usage of the
piezoelectric properties of copolymer foils for the acoustic emission sensor as a transducer of a
mechanical surface wave into electrical signal. Part II of the paper deals with the most fundamental
requirement for monitoring of cutting conditions during machining, i.e. excellent processing of
measured data. Data obtained from machining process obtained by means of acoustic emission
sensors, as discussed in the first part of this article, have high-frequency and continuous character of
a white noise. These data are very difficult to process. New apparatus for transformation of acoustic
emission into audible sound in the workplace is presented. The first stage of processing is by
listening to transformed data it is subjectively possible to recognize differences in audible spectrum,
corresponding to different states of the cutting tool. The second step is visualization of the
differences via the fast Fourier transform (FFT) in the spectrum graphic chart.